


The Great Big Disconnect

by somniari



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fake AH Crew, Light Bondage, M/M, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 14:11:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13342896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somniari/pseuds/somniari
Summary: Geoff’s plans for an elaborate casino heist are torpedoed when an old friend of Gavin’s goes missing.Michael waves a hand, catches Ryan's eye. "We'll get him back here, Geoff," he says. "Don't worry about it." Fuck, but he's worried about this. Gavin just walked out onGeoff. On them."You better," Geoff snarls. "We're six days out and there's no way we can do this without our main fucking tech guy. Tie him up if you have to, but bring him back here."





	The Great Big Disconnect

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I actually finished this and it only took, like, a year and changing huge bits of the story three times. It all went _so well_. 
> 
> So this is technically the sequel to [Free Fall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8109457), but it can be read separately from that.
> 
> There are no warnings for this fic other than the ones listed in the tag section above. The explicit language is pretty much what you'd hear in an average Achievement Hunter video - Michael and Geoff especially have potty mouths.
> 
> Feedback of any kind is treasured, as always.

"This," Gavin says on what Michael will later think of as 'day one', and the screen flickers for a second behind him before it comes to life, "is Tanya Delacroix." There's more flickering – probably the screen is dying; it's old and they use it intensively on a daily basis – and then there's a dozen photographs of the same woman.

She's tall, dark hair with not a strand out of place, piercing gray eyes, dressed expensively to Michael's relatively untrained eye. Being close to Gavin has taught him more about designer clothing brands than he ever wanted to know, though he still makes a concentrated effort not to learn too much useless shit information about fucking clothes.

"She owns and sometime operates casinos all over the US, though the most profitable ones are in Vice City and Liberty City." Gavin cycles through more photos, including some close-ups that were clearly taken without her knowing about it. "I'm sure some of you are familiar with some of these places."

More pictures, this time of the casinos in Vice and LC. Tall, ugly buildings with too many lights and gold accents. People coming and going, some of them looking like they hadn't seen the outside world in days. Tanya Delacroix with friends and lovers, male and female, and business partners, always dressed to the nines, practiced smile on her face.

"She's very wealthy and very smart," Gavin goes on. "Very shrewd. Apparently negotiating with her is a nightmare and she will not hesitate to figuratively shank you if you've outlived your usefulness to her. Right, Geoff?"

"She will also literally shank you. She's a former business associate of mine," says Geoff, tugging on his mustache. His eyes are slits, his mustache is drooping a little. "From around twelve... fifteen years ago. Back in Liberty City."

"Former?" Jeremy asks.

"Yeah, _former_." Geoff's eyes narrow impossibly further at the screen as her face appears again. He doesn't elaborate on why they're not working together anymore. "She's now planning on opening one of her Lucky Swine casinos right here in Los Santos."

"And Geoff wants to fuck her," Gavin adds cheerfully.

"Over!" Geoff says quickly. "I want to fuck her _over_ , Gavin, fuck you."

Gavin laughs, his high-pitched squeaky giggle that he gets when he pisses someone off and is pleased about it. "Noted, Geoff."

"Asshole," Geoff mutters, studiously avoiding Jack's eyes.

"We gonna rob it?" Michael asks. "Can we rob it before it even opens?"

"It's already open; she bought the Vinewood casino. The grand reopening is a couple of weeks from now. It'll be the Lucky Swine from then on out." Geoff gets up and joins Gavin up front. "She'll pour a significant amount of money into the vault beforehand so she won't have any cash flow problems on opening night. So." Geoff taps the screen, flicks at Tanya Delacroix's nose. "Night before opening? We're there."

Fucking yes, Michael thinks. It'll be their first casino hit and he's always wanted to do one.

"A lot of money, a little revenge." Geoff is looking mighty pleased with himself, with his plans for a casino heist, and Michael wonders what happened – and why this Tanya Delacroix is still alive if she once screwed Geoff Ramsey over. Usually people pay for that with their lives. "But," he adds and he takes the time to look at all of them, intently, "it'll be a lot of work. A lot of long days. We're not doing this half-cocked, not like we usually do." He grins. "We're going all in. Work hard, get rich. Well, richer than we already are. Got it?"

Michael pumps his fist. "Hell, yeah." He looks around the room, catches Gavin's eye, and Ryan's, and grins at them. Gavin's bouncing a little on his heels; Ryan's his usual stoic self, but Michael catches the hint of a smile twitching at his lips.

This is going to be _fun_.

He regrets his enthusiasm when day one of planning ends at almost 1am. They pile into a random car Ryan stole earlier that day and get back to Gav's apartment at 1.30. He's asleep by 1.45.

*

By day four Michael's getting a little bit annoyed and a lot more tired than he's willing to admit. The long days just don't end. They're never home before midnight and dinner's usually scarfed down at the conference table, standing over the kitchen sink, bent over floor plans and once, memorably, out on the third floor balcony where he'd fled before he killed Geoff for dumping even more paperwork about the high security tier three doors of the Lucky Swine in his lap.

"I'm bloody knackered," Gavin whines into Ryan's neck as they pile into the elevator at Gav's apartment building. Ryan hits the button for the sixth floor and slumps against the wall, an arm coming up to pull Gavin close. "Can I sleep?"

"Few more minutes," Ryan mumbles and yawns. "You know, this isn't the first time I'm pulling a couple of long nights, but I'm actually kinda feeling it. I'm getting old."

"So old," Gavin tells Ryan's neck and squeals when Ryan slides his fingers under his shirt and digs into his waist, making him squirm and try to get out from under Ryan's arm. "Ahhh, Ryan, no! Help me, Michael!"

Yeah, that'll happen. Gavin really should know better by now. "You deserve that," says Michael and yawns loudly, smoothly stepping to the side when Gavin manages to get away from Ryan for half a second before getting hauled back and tickled mercilessly. "I gotta piss so bad. Dibs on the bathroom."

Nobody even fights him for it, which tells Michael all he needs to know. By the time he gets out of the bathroom in just his pajama pants, Gavin's face down on the bed, still dressed but sound asleep, and Ryan's just pulling the curtains shut. He's dressed in his pants and nothing else – for now – and Michael feels something hot stir low in his belly and he'd act on it if not for the fact he can't stop yawning and sleep just seems so much more important than sex right now.

He sighs at Gavin – the shithead is fully dressed in their bed, goddammit – and starts pulling off his boots and jeans, murmuring a thanks to Ryan when Ryan wrestles a dead-to-the-world Gavin out of his damn shirt. Gav usually sleeps naked, but they just leave him in his boxers tonight, and Ryan drags him up toward the pillow on the far side of the bed. Gavin doesn't wake even once.

*

The fifth day Michael's actually back at the apartment by 10.30. It'd be a goddamn godsend, except he's alone. Ryan's at a meet with an arms dealer with Geoff and Jack and Gavin's still in his lab at the base, probably getting a bitch of a headache from the glare of a million different monitors.

Fuck.

Fucking hell.

Michael kicks off his shoes and flings them under the coffee table before throwing himself on the couch and fishing around for the remote. Some late night show is on and he can't even be fucked to pay any attention. The exhaustion has settled into his bones. It's part of him now. He kind of wants to jerk off, but he's pretty sure he'll fall asleep in the middle of it.

Christ.

He drags himself up and goes through his evening routine on autopilot and he's asleep by eleven. He doesn't even notice the others coming home.

*

The job offer that Andy calls with is basically too good to pass up. A day's work, including travel and set-up, and a very generous payout. Michael tells Andy he's a shithead, but a useful shithead, then hangs up and takes the job to Geoff.

Geoff says no.

"What?" says Michael. He must have heard it wrong.

Geoff rubs his eyes and doesn't quite look at Michael, instead focused on the tablet in his lap. "I can't spare you."

"It's only a day," says Michael, spreading his hands. This isn't a big deal... is it? "I leave at eight in the morning, be back by, like, six pm. Tops."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

"You have two meets tomorrow and you and Jeremy were going out to the quarry to test that new C4 compound... thing... thingamajig you've been working on tomorrow," says Geoff. "I can't swap you out of the meets, Michael, they've met with you twice now. They'd get spooked if I suddenly sent Gav or Jack, if they even had time, which they don't."

Geoff only occasionally tells them not to take an outside job and he's never told Michael no. It kind of sucks.

"This is a big job, Michael," Geoff says after a short pause in which neither one of them says anything. "I need everyone's attention to be focused on this and this alone." Now he gives Michael a quick look and his eyes are cold. "I won't let this go to shit because somewhere along the line we made a small but crucial fuck-up." He sighs and drags his fingers through his hair. "Can you move the job up a week or two?"

"Time sensitive," Michael says shortly.

"Sorry," says Geoff and it sounds like he actually means it. It doesn't help much.

"Yeah," says Michael, turning to leave. "Me too."

Fuck.

*

"This," says Geoff, staring at the pictures with dollar signs in his eyes, "is fucking beautiful. How did Steffie even get her hands on these? Do I even want to know?"

"She's pretty good at her job," says Jack, bending over the pictures as well.

They're clear, high resolution shots of the Lucky Swine vault and its intricate set of locks. They're in an area nobody can even get to and where there are no cameras that are connected to the internet. Michael's a lot impressed. He doesn't know Steffie all that well, but he feels very strongly that she deserves a raise of some kind for coming up with these.

Gavin's scanning them in one and by one with his phone and throwing them up on the big screen, whistling quietly between his teeth as he works. "This is going to be really tricky," he says. "That's a Ventaris lock system. I know of it, but I've never cracked one." He chews on his bottom lip. "Might need a little help with that," he admits.

Geoff waves a hand. "Whatever you need, buddy. Whoever you need." His eyes are locked on the pictures. Michael's not sure he's even listening very closely. "We have to do this. We just gotta do this. She's going to regret crossing me; she's going to regret fucking with me _so hard_."

Jack gives him a long, long look, but doesn't say anything and redirects her attention to Jeremy and Michael. "Bombs?" she asks.

"With this door?" says Jeremy. "No way."

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen," Michael says. "Any bomb big enough to destroy this door is going to take the whole building down on top of us."

Jeremy nods. "I can build a bomb big enough to bust this bitch, but we'd have to be several miles away to safely detonate it. It's a no go."

"We'll figure something out," Geoff says cheerfully. He's the happiest Michael's ever seen him. "Meanwhile, Michael, Jeremy, I've got a job for you two chucklefucks. You're gonna love it."

Michael almost never loves jobs Geoff introduces him to with lines like that. He doesn't today, either, as he ends up on a goddamn stakeout for a little over nine hours, watching a Lucky Swine security guard's house to figure out if he can be bought in any way.

Michael is really starting to hate Geoff.

*

"Fuck everything," Michael declares on day nine and slowly bangs his head against the bathroom mirror. It's a little after six am and he's fucking _tired_.

Gavin wraps his arms around him from behind and presses a kiss against the back of Michael's neck, just above his shirt collar. "We're getting there, Michael. Couple more days, Geoff said." His voice is a little cracked and a lot sleepy and his obvious exhaustion is making his accent stronger.

"Geoff's saying a lot of things," Michael growls. "I actually get to build shit today, but fuck dammit, I didn't want to have to be in by fucking _seven am_. I'm going to kill Geoff."

Gavin feels real nice pressed up against Michael's back. He's like a skinny furnace and he smells so damn good, fresh out of the shower. Michael wants to turn around and sink to his knees and have him fuck his face – it's been over a week since he got laid, and he just fucking _wants it_.

Gavin's mouthing the back of his neck, between his shoulder blades, and his hands are tightening on Michael's stomach, sweeping to his hips. Michael takes a deep breath, fights his beginning erection down, and turns in the circle of Gavin's arms. Gavin, of course, immediately takes the opportunity to kiss him, open mouth against Michael's, tongue snaking in before Michael can even say a word. Probably smart, because Michael was definitely going to tell him they don't have time for this.

Fuck it all. Michael closes his eyes and kisses back for a long minute, pulling Gavin closer by his hips, tasting minty toothpaste and feeling him clean shaven for the first time in days.

He pulls back from the kiss and rests his forehead against Gavin's. "We gotta go," he says quietly.

Gavin breathes out. "I know."

Fuck _everything_.

*

Ryan's grinning at him, his hand hot and firm and slick on Michael's dick. Michael gasps, bucks up, swearing when his back hits the edge of the sink. It's been almost two weeks since Michael's gotten off – yeah, fuck it all, he's been too tired to even jerk himself off – and, well, it's embarrassing, really, how quickly Ryan is getting him completely worked up.

In the bathroom.

At six-twenty am.

Michael moans and the sound echoes against the slick walls; Ryan moves in, kisses him long and slow, his fingers dragging hard along the underside of Michael's dick.

"Fuck," Michael says, except it comes out more like _fuhhhh_ because he can't really get the word out, and Ryan the fucking asshole is now laughing at him, at his despair.

"C'mon, Michael," Ryan murmurs against his mouth. "You wanna come? You're so fucking close, just let it all out."

He fucking wants to, but he's not quite there yet. He thrusts up into Ryan's fist, grabs a hold of the sink behind him and gets his free hand into Ryan's shirt to have something to hold on to. He looks ridiculous, he knows, fully dressed but with his fly undone and his dick sticking out. He doesn't care. Ryan's hand is on his dick, that's all that matters.

"Oh, whoops, excuse me, lads, don't mind me." And there's Gavin, ducking into the bathroom, giving the two of them an appreciative look and a raised eyebrow, and he's reaching past Michael for his toothbrush. Is he for fucking real? "Looks like fun," he adds, smearing toothpaste on his toothbrush. Yep, he is definitely going to casually brush his teeth while Michael's getting a handjob.

"It's pretty decent," Ryan agrees. "Gotta be quick, though."

"Yeah, you gotta be outta here in ten minutes," says Gavin.

"Shut up," Michael groans, "shut up and fucking jerk me off."

Ryan gets serious now, crowding Michael against the sink, bumping Gavin out of the way, and Michael whines when his grip becomes just that little firmer, his touch a little more calculating. He's panting harshly, eyes fluttering closed, and he can feel Gavin press closer, one of his hands sliding under Michael's shirt and stroking across the skin of his stomach. He groans at the drag and press and catches Gavin's hand, trying to direct it lower. A hand on his dick and a hand on his ass sounds real good right about now, but Ryan has other ideas, bats Gavin's hand away.

"All mine," Ryan growls, "I'll get to you later."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Gavin mumbles around his toothbrush. "It's gonna be a long-ass day for me today."

Michael does not care about Gavin's long day. Right here, right now is what's important, and Ryan kisses him again, biting at Michael's lower lip as he fists Michael's dick. Michael moans, hips pushing up and up and up, and he goes up on his toes and his whole body goes tight as his orgasm finally hits him and he comes all over Ryan's hand. "Fuck," he pants, "Jesus, fuck, Ryan–" His body is still hot and flushed and his legs are shaky when he starts to come down. Ryan slides a strong arm around his waist, not doing anything but supporting him, and Gavin nudges him affectionately.

"Good, yeah?" Gavin asks in a mumble, leaning down to spit into the sink. "Shame we don't have time for anything more than this."

Michael leans back against the sink, against Ryan's arm around him, and swallows hard, staring up at the ceiling, feeling sweat collect on his brow, under his curls. Fuck, he might need another shower, which he does not have time for. Worth it, he decides, and reaches up to drag Ryan down for a kiss.

Ryan's phone starts beeping in the middle of the kiss – of fucking course – and they break apart reluctantly.

"I gotta be out of here," Ryan says, grabbing his mask from the counter. He reels Gavin in for a quick, hard kiss. "See you tonight."

"Yeah," says Michael, cleaning up, tucking himself back in and zipping up. "Tonight." He doubts they'll have time for anything tonight, doubts whether they'll even be home before midnight. This month's been pretty fucking hellish so far; that damn casino job better pay off.

Big time.

*

Michael finds Geoff in the living room surrounded by empty takeout boxes, loaded guns and glossy printed pictures of the Lucky Swine casino. He's staring at the bullet hole smiley on the wall, not really even seeing it, and starts when Michael clears his throat from the doorway. "Jesus." He scrubs a hand down his face. "Didn't hear you."

"Yeah, I figured that," says Michael, eyeing him. "You okay?"

Geoff waves him off. That crease in his brow is becoming permanent. "I'm fine. Just thinking."

"Don't hurt yourself," says Michael, but the joke falls flat. He catches sight of the stack of pictures and notes that there's pictures of Delacroix in the mix too. "So... this Tanya Delacroix–"

Geoff's already shaking his head. "Some day, Michael. It's not important to the mission."

Michael raises his eyebrows. "It's not?"

"No." Geoff's eyes are sharp when he turns to Michael. It's the kind of narrow-eyed stare Michael hates having directed at him. "It's a job. Break in, steal, leave, preferably without being noticed. That's the mission. Whatever happened between her and me is in the past and that's where it'll stay. It's not relevant. I was young and stupid and..." His voice trails off. "It was a learning experience, let's just leave it at that."

Michael crosses his arms and leans against the doorpost. "So... you wanna kill her?"

"I don't think we'll even run into her," Geoff answers, grabbing the pictures and shuffling them into a neat, tight stack.

"Not what I asked."

Geoff gives him a quick look. "If I ever see her again in the flesh, I'll put a knife between her ribs. Or a bullet. Or five bullets. I'm not picky."

Michael lets out a low whistle. "You know that's just making me more curious about what happened between you two."

Geoff groans. "Get the fuck out. Don't you have work to do?"

Fucking Christ, does he ever.

Michael leaves, but catches Geoff blowing out a long breath when he shoots one last look over his shoulder.

*

"Christ, Gavin," Michael says, licking a slow trail up his dick. "Be still, would you?" He and Gavin don't usually get out the restraints, that's more of a Ryan-and-Gavin thing, but he's seriously considering it what with the way Gavin keeps moving and flailing.

"Michael, Michael," Gavin gasps, twitching and squirming because Michael's got two fingers in his ass, is working on a third, and is deliberately going as slowly as humanly possible because fuck it, they finally have _time_. Glorious, blissful fucking _time_ , for the first time in thirteen days. Not that Michael's been keeping count. "You gotta go faster, Michael, for Christ's sake, you are such a damned tease–"

Michael chuckles, sucks the head of his dick into his mouth and presses his fingers in deep, thoroughly enjoying the way Gavin's hips lift off the mattress and his hands curl into fists. He swallows Gavin down again, his nose pressed against Gavin’s pubic hair, and Gavin swears loudly above him, words and phrases Michael doesn't hear from him unless he's completely losing his shit.

It's then, of course, that Ryan slinks into the room, apologetic look on his face, his phone in his hands.

"I am very sorry," says Ryan, his eyes darting all over the two of them, "God, I seriously am because that looks pretty fucking good, but I've got Geoff on the phone for you, Gav."

Michael pulls off Gavin's dick with a glare. "What?" he snaps.

Gavin raises his head from the pillow. "I'm kind of in the middle of something here, Ryan!" he says, gesturing broadly at himself and Michael, at the sweat covering both their bodies, the mess they already made of the sheets.

"You know," says Ryan, shifting his weight. He's partway through his face paint and the sad expression on his face looks kind of ridiculous with it. "I can see that, but he's insisting it's an emergency and you weren't answering your own phone. Or Michael's."

"It's because we're _busy_ ," Michael snarls. "Goddammit."

Gavin groans and struggles to push himself up, all wobbly. "A damned emergency. Give me the damn phone, Ryan."

"Gavin," says Michael, aghast. "I was sucking you off."

"Well aware of that, Michael," Gavin grumbles. "Believe me, I am." He shifts on the bed, grimacing when Michael slides his fingers out and reaches for a wet wipe, and snags the phone out of Ryan's hands. "What, Geoff."

Michael cannot believe what is happening right now. Ryan blows out a breath and mouths _sorry_ at him before ducking back out. He didn't have time to join them this morning; he's supposed to be in by eight while Michael and Gavin aren't needed until ten. They had time.

"You're having a laugh," Gavin's saying into the phone, "please tell me you are having a la—yes, you did interrupt something, Geoffrey. What? No. No. No, I'm not telling you that because surely you don't actually want all the details of exactly what I was doing and who I was doing it wi–that's what I thought." Gavin looks smug for half a second before his face falls. "Right now?"

God-fucking-dammit. Michael sighs, looks mournfully at Gavin's still spread legs and his half-hard cock. There's not gonna be a happy ending to this.

Fuck.

*

Michael's devised three different ways to take out Geoff without leaving a trace. One of those ways relies on Gavin's help, another on Ryan's, but he's pretty sure they'll throw themselves in with him, judging by how hard Gavin is trying to not glare Geoff to death right now. It's nearly six pm on a Wednesday with a little more over a week to go before they're going to pull the heist.

They've been here since eight. It feels like they've been here since last week.

Gavin's stretched out on the couch, a laptop on his stomach, and he's typing a little more aggressively than strictly necessary. Michael can see the lines of exhaustion in his face, the bags under his half-closed eyes. It's making him yawn and he blinks furiously behind his glasses to clear the resulting tears. Jesus, he feels like dogshit.

"All right," says Geoff, flapping his arms around like a mad marionette, and circles the coffee table. "Next up, we have–"

"Geoff," says Jack, stretching and getting out of her chair. She looks around the room, sees Michael slumped at the table, Jeremy curled up on the floor staring at a blueprint without really seeing it, and Gavin on the couch, eyes fixed on his laptop. She sighs heavily. "Come on. We need a break."

"What?" says Geoff, looking at her, following her pointed finger toward the clock. "It's only... shit, it's _six_?"

"A break longer than an hour," Jack says patiently. "Ryan's gonna be back from his stakeout in half an hour. I say we all go home after that and don't come back til Friday."

"Til _Friday_?" Geoff sputters. "Jack, we have a lot of work to do! There's surveillance, somebody needs to get inside and recheck the camera locations, there's that arms deal we need to renegotiate because fuck them, I'm not paying them eight grand for–"

Jeremy yawns so loud his jaw cracks and that, of all things, makes Geoff stop dead. "Oh, man." Jeremy covers his mouth with his hand, eyes wide. "Sorry about that."

"Don't apologize, Lil' J," says Michael. "We're all tired."

"I'm not tired!" says Geoff.

"Yeah, but you run on whiskey and insanity," says Gavin. "The rest of us are mere humans." He props himself up into a sitting position and stretches his arms over his head, spine cracking. "Jack, that's a wonderful idea and I love you a lot right now."

"Only right now?" she asks, one eyebrow raised.

"Only right now." Gavin grins and swings his legs to the floor. "You're all right the rest of the time."

"We're going to make mistakes, Geoff," Michael says, before Geoff can start ranting about all the work they still need to do, all the planning and surveillance and deals with gun sellers and bribery that still need to be pulled off. "We're almost fucking dead. Jack's right."

"Yeah," says Jeremy. "If I stare at these blueprints any longer, I'm pretty sure I'll go blind. It's been, what, two weeks of almost non-stop working? Not even a little bitty heist to break up the monotony? A tiny little robbery? Some B&E? A snatch-and-grab? A mugging?"

"All right, all right, all right." Geoff pinches the bridge of his nose and heaves a deep sigh. "I hear you. You're all babies and you need a nap. Maybe a play date or two."

"Weh, weh," says Michael, doing his shittiest baby impression. It still makes Gavin giggle and that's all he cares about. "Change my diaper, daddy."

"Don't make it creepy." Geoff stabs a finger in his direction. "Save it for home."

Gavin makes a face.

"So, fine, everyone's off tomorrow." Geoff sighs again. "Be back here Friday at eight and you better be fucking ready to put in some work. I realize we've been pushing it hard, but the payoff's gonna be worth it, I promise. Millions and millions of dollars are in that vault and it's all going to be ours. We're gonna be un-fucking-touchable in this damn town. People are going to cry when they see us. They're gonna beg us to let them be a part of us."

"Christ, thank you," says Michael, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. He could fall asleep right now, in this $400 yet still uncomfortable chair that Geoff only picked because of its hideous seat covering – bright orange and purple. He senses Jeremy’s influence there and it hurts his eyes if he looks at it too long.

"I'm texting Ryan," Gavin mutters, bent over his phone and scrubbing a hand through his hair. "God, I can't even type; my hands are shaking so badly." He fumbles with his phone, nearly drops it, and gives up, letting it loosely dangle from his fingers.

"Gimme," says Michael, making a grabby motion at him and rather than telling him to use his own damn phone, Gavin tosses Michael his phone – his actual, real, non-burner phone – and flops back down on the couch. Michael catches it, glances at it, then at Gavin, and shrugs and finishes Gav's half-typed message to Ryan. Who is, of course, "Lovely Ryan <3" in his contacts list. Michael wonders what he's listed as and he's tempted to check, but he resists. "Sent," he says instead, throwing the phone back.

Geoff's watched the whole thing with a raised eyebrow, but he doesn't comment.

Forty-four minutes later, Gavin's phone buzzes as Michael's goes off and Michael knows that's Ryan in their little group chat.

 _'IM OUTSIDE IN A CAR WITH THE ENGINE RUNNING',_ the message says and Michael has to laugh at the desperation present in the all caps. _'LETS GO THE FUCK HOME.'_

"Yeah, we're out of here," he announces, getting up and extending a hand to Gavin. "Ryan's waiting for us and he seems a little impatient. See you on Friday, assholes." He slings an arm around Gavin as they head toward the door and tightens his grip when Gavin stumbles a little. "You okay?"

"Jus' knackered," Gavin mumbles, pressing closer. "I feel like I could sleep for a month, Michael."

There's the most most welcome sight Michael's seen in weeks. Ryan at the wheel of a car, already pointed in the direction they need to go. Michael shoves Gavin into the backseat and gets into the front himself, looking over his shoulder to see Gavin with his face smushed into the seat, his eyes shut tight. "Gav," he says. "Get up. You'll suffocate."

Ryan chuckles. "A mostly painless death. And actually preferable to the day I've had."

"It was a fun stakeout, huh?" says Michael.

"Wonderful," says Ryan, glancing in the rear view mirror when Gavin struggles to sit up and then curls up against the door, head drooping immediately. "You guys are wiped out too, huh?"

"Yeah," says Michael, grabbing his phone. "I'm gonna order us some food now so it'll be there by the time we get there. Then we can sleep. Oh, God, I wanna sleep."

"Another thrilling night," Ryan says. "Just what I signed up for."

"It'll be fun when we're actually robbing the place," says Michael, putting in everyone's favorite orders at the pizza place nearest to Gavin's apartment. "You doing okay?" He looks over and frowns a little. Ryan's much like Michael in that he can't sit still very long and stakeouts are hard on both of them. He's taken off the mask, but he's still wearing the face paint, and underneath that Michael can see the little stress lines that didn't used to be there. God, they all need some damn time off. More than a day, at least.

"I'm fine," says Ryan. "Stakeout was fucking boring. Nothing new happened. At least yesterday there was a new guard hire. Exciting stuff for about five minutes."

"My eyes hurt," Gavin mumbles from the back. "Been staring at screens too long."

They don't talk much on their way home, and Michael almost dozes off a little in the passenger seat, startling to fully awake when Ryan parks in the underground garage and starts rummaging in the dashboard for face wipes.

"I can erase the footage," says Gavin, words a bit slurred.

Ryan waves him off. "Easier for you if I just go in with my normal face."

The Vagabond: terrifying criminal with a body count somewhere in the several hundreds, and a considerate man. Michael watches him scrub his face, takes the dirty wipes and hands him clean ones when he needs them. Gavin's rummaging around in the back, gathering up all his shit before getting out and leaning heavily against the side of the car, yawning so loudly Michael can hear it from inside.

Once Ryan's face is clean, they trudge inside, wait for the elevator, and drag themselves into Gav's apartment. Michael claims the nearest couch, Ryan picks the big comfy chair to sprawl out in, and Gavin just barely makes it to the second couch, throwing himself on it and curling up into an awkward, long-legged ball.

"Food should be here soon," Michael says, checking the app on his phone. "Pizza and breadsticks and garlic knots for everyone."

Gavin groans and turns his head toward Michael. "You're my favorite Michael," he says.

"I'm your only Michael," Michael says, feeling something warm curl up in his chest. "I better be."

"Just one Michael in my life," says Gavin sleepily. "And one Ryan." His eyes drift close and he's off. Michael's always been impressed with how quickly Gavin can fall asleep in pretty much any position at any time.

Ryan yawns widely and slumps down in the chair, rubbing at his eyes. "He's got the best idea," he says, "I wanna sleep so badly."

"Food first," says Michael. "Otherwise we'll wake up in two hours, starving. I haven't had anything since lunch."

"I had a snack in the car," says Ryan. "Donuts."

Michael raises his eyebrows at him. "Ate the whole box, huh?"

Ryan looks mildly embarrassed. "It was a small box?"

"God, how are your teeth not rotting out of your mouth?" Michael says and now he's yawning too, dammit, Ryan.

"Good dental hygiene," says Ryan, grinning at him. "C'mere."

Michael looks at him, but pushes himself up and comes to a stop next to Ryan's chair, unsure what he even wants. Ryan grabs his wrist and tugs him down until he's sitting in Ryan's lap, which, okay, it's very nice; a place he hasn't been in a while.

"Missed this," Ryan murmurs and he draws Michael down for a slow kiss. "Missed you."

"Been a while," Michael agrees, voice dipping low as Ryan's hand grips his waist. "We'll have time tomorrow." He goes back to kissing Ryan, dragging his mouth across the stubble on his cheek, making him shudder. He feels a lot more awake now, blood rushing south, but he knows he'll crash as soon as he's eaten, so they shouldn't get too worked up.

"Tomorrow," Ryan says, voice cracking when Michael's tongue finds its way into his mouth. He kisses back hungrily and Michael loses himself a little in the insistent press and slide of Ryan's lips against his own.

Gavin stirs on the couch, eyes fluttering open like he's got some sort of weird sixth sense for Michael and Ryan making out six feet away from him, and the two of them look over at him. He blinks at them and grins, pushing his hair out of his face.

"Definitely tomorrow," says Michael.

*

Gavin lets out a sound that's somewhere between a squeak and a yell when Ryan simply picks him up and tosses him on the bed. Fucking skinny fuck. Michael's already laughing, his hands going to the buttons of his shirt and the buckle of his belt. Gavin lands with a low thud, on his side, and he rolls over onto his back just in time to brace himself for Ryan practically throwing himself on top of him.

"Ryan!" Gavin says indignantly, his hands coming up to curl over Ryan's shoulders. "You're a caveman, Ryan."

"Caveman," Michael repeats with a giggle. He feels good and clear headed for the first time in days. A solid fourteen hours of sleep does that to a man. And he's about to get laid. He can't complain.

"It's okay, you like it when I'm being a _caveman_ ," Ryan says, crushing his mouth to Gavin's before Gavin can respond, burying a hand in Gavin's hair so he can tilt his head back for better access.

Michael groans at the sight and yanks at his shirt tails when they're not pulling free from his jeans fast enough. One of Gavin's hands flails around a little, in Michael's direction, and it takes Michael a second to realize Gavin's reaching for him. "Just a sec, Gav," he says, struggling out of his jeans.

Gavin curls his other arm around Ryan's neck and deepens the kiss, spreading his legs so Ryan can settle in between them. "Clothes," he murmurs between kisses. "Why are we wearing clothes still?"

"Yeah," says Ryan, "yeah." He breaks the kiss and sits up on his knees to pull his shirt off with one hand, his other grabbing at Michael's waist, calloused fingers leaving goosebumps in their wake.

It takes a few minutes before all three have finally disposed of all their inconvenient clothing – especially since Ryan seems very unwilling to get off of Gavin to let him undress – but eventually Michael finds himself kissing both of them lazily, shivering when Gavin drags his fingers through his curls, tugging on random stray ends.

"Remember when you straightened your hair? It was awful," Gavin says, grinning at him.

"Remember when you shaved your head?" Michael fires back. "Got news for you, buddy: not a great look either."

Ryan's head snaps down to look at Gavin. "You _shaved_ your head?" He threads his fingers through Gavin's hair again and stares at him hard like he's trying to picture it. "Why?"

Gavin shrugs, trying to look nonchalant and failing miserably. "I was sick and tired of my hair always going everywhere and just... did it one day at the hairdresser's. It's fine. Hair grows back, you know."

"I got pictures," Michael offers and Gavin groans. "Turns out he's got a weirdly shaped head."

"After," Gavin says, "after this." He shifts underneath Ryan, lifting his bare hips up, half-hard cock brushing against Ryan's stomach. "All the embarrassing pictures you could ever want after we do the thing Geoff has been cockblocking us on for weeks now."

"Good point," Ryan says, voice unsteady. "Pictures can wait."

"No argument here," Michael says, turning Ryan's face toward him with a hand pressed against his jaw and kissing him. "I'll grab the lube."

"Handcuffs," Ryan calls out after him and the loud groan Gavin lets out shoots through Michael like fire. "The padded ones."

Michael rummages through the toy drawer and disentangles the padded cuffs from the police issued cuffs (Gavin stole them from the cop car he'd taken on a joyride a few weeks ago) and the longer leg restraints and swears under his breath. "I'm gonna sort out this drawer this weekend," he announces, mostly to himself because Ryan and Gavin are sounding like they're not listening to him _at all_ , and when he turns back, cuffs in hand, he bites back a whimper at the image they make, tangled up and flushed.

"Lube?" Ryan asks when Michael's shuffled back over and tossed him the cuffs.

"Oh, shit." Michael laughs at himself. "Got a little distracted and forgot what I went to get. Be right back."

Ryan smiles at him, a little crooked, his eyes bright, and Michael leans in to kiss him again before going back to the nightstand and grabbing the lube. God, he's a lucky son of a bitch.

He gets back to the action – again – and kneels up behind Ryan. Great view from this angle. Ryan's got a very nice ass and Michael runs his hands over it, thumbing the faint scar there, the one Ryan refuses to tell them how he got it. Someday they'll get that story out of him, Michael knows it. Gavin is nothing if not annoyingly persistent.

He smooths his hands across Ryan's hips, feels his dick twitch when Ryan shivers and drops his head lower. The lube is... somewhere. Michael fumbles around for it, eventually closing his fingers around the tube.

"Here," he starts, clearing his throat when the word comes out a little cracked, "you first." He passes the lube to Ryan, who uncaps it with a flick of his thumb.

Last time they did this, Michael had been the one in the middle. He still can't think about it without his knees going all shivery and weak, being pressed between the two of them, feeling both of them all around him. Gavin panting in his ear as he pressed into him, Ryan groaning and lifting his hips as Michael slid into him... Yeah. That had been pretty fucking great.

This. This is gonna be good too. Michael's breathing is coming in light and shallow as he watches Ryan lean over Gavin and get his wrists, locking them into the padded cuffs and looping the chain between the bars of the headboard. Gavin whines a little, experimentally giving the cuffs a couple of tugs and sighing when they don't budge.

"Good?" Ryan asks, running a finger between the cuffs and Gavin's wrist to check the tightness.

"Yeah," Gavin says, licking his lips. "Class."

Michael's mouth curls into a smile. He wasn't at all surprised when Gavin first showed him the cuffs, but it's still a hell of a thrill to see Gavin go all pliant and easy when they're around his wrists, surrendering himself to whatever Ryan and Michael want.

Ryan's skin is hot to the touch and Michael presses his palm between his shoulder blades to feel muscle and bone shift as Ryan lifts Gavin's legs up and over his shoulders. Gavin wriggles his hips down a little, getting more comfortable, and smiles at them.

"Been waiting to do this," he says, voice pitched low. "Thinking about it while we were stuck at the base or out on bloody surveillance." His dick is hard, resting against his thigh. Michael wants to feel it, suck it. "It's been too long." And then he groans and arches his back when Ryan works a couple of slick fingers into his ass.

"Yeah?" Ryan asks. "What exactly were you thinking?" He passes the lube to Michael with his free hand and twists the fingers of his other hand in Gavin's ass.

Gavin groans and pulls at the restraints, his fingers flexing. "Oh, you know," he says, the words coming out breathlessly. "You two. This, pretty much. Ever since we talked about i—ah, Ryan!" One of his legs kicks out and slides off Ryan's shoulder; Michael grabs it and brings it back up, squeezing at his ankle, reveling in the noise Gavin makes at the unexpected pressure. Gavin really likes getting grabbed and moved, Michael's found out.

Ryan presses his bare ass back into Michael and now it's Michael's turn to let out a pretty undignified noise. "Just a sec, Michael," Ryan says. "Oh, fuck."

"Tryin'," Michael says, rubbing his dick against Ryan's ass. He smears the lube on his fingers and dick and starts tracing little circles around Ryan's hole. "Hurry the hell up before I come all over your ass."

A shudder runs through Ryan's body. "Another time," he says, grinning at Michael over his shoulder. "Because that sounds pretty fun."

"Well, I want to come inside your ass," says Michael, slowly fisting his dick just to take the edge off a little bit. His thighs are beginning to strain. "So, again, hurry the fuck up so I can actually do that."

"Impatient, Michael," Gavin mutters and tilts his head back with a choked off gasp, pressing it into the pillows when Ryan lines himself up and steadily pushes in.

Michael forgets to breathe for a second as he watches Gavin's face, watches how Gavin's mouth falls open a little, how his brow crinkles. A fucking amazing sight. He'll never tire of it. He'll also won't tire of seeing Gavin and Ryan kiss, deep and languid, but he is getting tired of kneeling here with his throbbing dick out.

So he shuffles further forward and grips Ryan's ass, pushing two fingers inside and moaning a little when Ryan clenches around them. Fuck, but Ryan's gonna feel amazing around his dick. Two long weeks of no sex (that one handjob barely counts); it's been more of a trial than Michael expected. He's really gotten used to getting laid pretty much daily. It'd be a little embarrassing, except he doesn't really care right now.

"Ready, Ryan?" he asks, guiding his dick to Ryan's hole.

"Yeah," says Ryan, his voice strained with the effort of not moving inside Gavin.

"Gav?"

"Oh, God, please move." Gavin's voice is high and needy and he's pulling helplessly on his restraints. "Please, please."

Michael takes a deep breath and pushes into Ryan. Fuck, fuck, fucking _fuck_ , Ryan feels so good, so tight and hot around his dick. Michael's eyes close by themselves and he gasps wetly as he sinks in further and folds himself over Ryan's broad back, kissing the scar closest to his lips. He pulls back a little and slides back in with a groan. "Feel so good, Ryan," he manages.

"Fuck," is all Ryan can say through gritted teeth. "Oh, my God."

"Move, Ryan," Gavin demands and Michael wishes he could reach him to lick the sweat from his temple. Next time. Which would hopefully be at some point today.

"If I move, it's gonna be over real soon," Ryan informs him and Michael can just see his jaw clench and relax and tense up again. The muscles in his arms are trembling with the effort to hold himself up over Gavin.

"We've got time, we can go again," says Gavin and he does something with his hips that makes Ryan throw his head back and groan loudly. "I'm not in the mood for slow, Ryan. I want it hard and I want it fast."

"I agree," Michael says, snapping his hips forward and dragging a broken moan out of Ryan. "None of this slow shit. We can fuck again later."

Finding a rhythm is always the tricky part and it's a couple of stops and starts before they get into it (Gavin dissolves into giggles twice) but when they finally manage, it's fucking glorious. Michael closes his eyes again and loses himself in it, in them, in Ryan and Gavin and the way they move and sound. He grips Ryan's hips hard enough to bruise and feels Ryan's answering shudder at the pressure.

"Fuck," Michael manages, as Ryan clenches and squeezes around him, pushing back hard. "Jesus, Ryan, keep doing that, please, God..." He fucks Ryan hard and deep, just the way he likes it, the way he knows Ryan likes it, and he's at this point only vaguely aware of Gavin crying out under Ryan, of Ryan saying something, voice low and raspy. He doesn't think it's directed at him and he doesn't care either, too lost in the sensations of fucking Ryan.

He keeps up an aggressive pace and finds the angle that makes Ryan let out some undignified grunts and noises he'll deny making later, and grins to himself. Ryan's pretty composed during sex and making him lose his shit is always so fucking _satisfying_. He grinds down deep and hard, dragging his nails across Ryan's lower back, leaving red marks, and revels in the cut off choking noises Ryan can't – and doesn't – keep inside.

Ryan bucks his hips wildly and that's doing something to Gavin too, because he gets louder, and the headboard rattles and creaks dangerously as he struggles in the handcuffs.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Michael gasps out, his voice coming out ridiculously squeaky, "fuck, Ryan, I'm gonna—I'm so damn close—" Ryan's low chuckle reverberates through his body like it always does, making his toes curl and the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. "Fuck me, you feel so fucking _good_ —"

Michael's orgasm hits him like a freight train (two weeks of no goddamn sex will do that to a man, apparently); he feels shaken with it, burning hot all over and still wanting more, so much more. He's still moving, panting desperately, even though he's going soft inside Ryan. More, he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut, his thighs quivering. As soon as he can; as soon as _they_ can. His orgasm has taken the edge off a little, but God, he just doesn't want to stop. He has to because his body is turning to jelly right now, and he flops down across Ryan's broad back and pants into his skin.

There's wild desperation in the way Ryan's still moving and he's got his head down and he's mouthing at Gavin's skin, biting at the juncture where Gavin's neck meets his shoulder. An impressive bruise's already forming there – clearly something that Ryan had been working on while Michael was losing his goddamn mind.

Michael collapses down next to the two of them, pressing up against Gavin, and watches him get fucked through half-lidded eyes. His body is hot and buzzing and he slowly comes down from his pretty fucking fantastic orgasm. He wriggles his toes experimentally – yep, they still work. He wasn't sure there for a moment.

Ryan's face is scrunched up with pleasure, his mouth half open, his cheeks red, his hair loose around his face. Fucking amazing. Michael can't help himself; he reaches up and strokes his fingers down Ryan's jaw, finger tips catching on lingering stubble and sweat. Ryan grins at him for a second, then his eyes close.

"Michael," Gavin manages, "Michael, please—" And he turns his head toward Michael and Michael just catches Ryan bending down and dragging his teeth across Gavin's collarbone before Michael shuffles closer and claims Gavin's mouth in a hard kiss, more teeth than tongue. It's exactly what Gavin wants right now, what he needs, because he groans into Michael's mouth, whimpering when Michael bites at his lower lip.

"Gonna come from getting fucked?" he murmurs against Gavin's mouth.

"That's the plan," Ryan chimes in through gritted teeth and Michael glances down to where Gavin's cock is hard and bouncing up and down in time with Ryan's hard, deep thrusts. He wants to reach out and wrap his fingers around him, feel him, stroke him hard, make him twist in his grip, but he's sure Ryan would knock his hand away. Next round, he tells himself. There'll be a next round. He wants to suck Gavin off. He wants to suck Ryan off. He wants many, many things.

"You gonna get there, Gav?" Ryan leans down and kisses him hard, grabbing one of Gavin's legs and bending it back toward his chest.

Gavin whimpers and nods, squeezes his eyes shut. "Harder," he says, the word coming out a little slurred. "Please, please..." He twists underneath Ryan, tugging on his restraints, trying to free his leg from Ryan's firm grip with no success, and arches his back, his head pushing back into the pillow. He looks a fucking sight, fucking wrecked, teeth marks on his bottom lip – from himself or Michael or Ryan, Michael's not sure. "C-can't believe you came first, Michael," he says. "Thought for sure it was gonna be—ah, ah! Was gonna be... R-Ryan."

"Shut the fuck up," Michael says, even though he knows what Gavin's doing. He also knows it's gonna work.

And yep, there it is.

"Make me," Gavin says, voice hoarse, eyes glittering as they lock onto Michael's. His lips twist up in a grin that drops again immediately when Ryan slams in particularly hard. "Ah, _Christ_ ," he wheezes and Michael grins as Gavin reflexively pulls on the handcuffs, making them rattle against the bars. "Was that because I doubted your stamina, Ryan?" He's panting as he says it, that infuriating shit-eating grin back in full force and Michael just wants to wipe that smile away any way he can.

"Michael," Ryan grinds out. "Shut him up."

Can do. Michael clamps his hand over Gavin's mouth and Gavin goes a little nuts, thrashing underneath Ryan, the leg still over Ryan's shoulder almost slipping off. Something hot and primal runs through Michael at the sight and he sinks his teeth into his lower lip as he holds his hand over Gavin's mouth, shivering when a breeze hits the cooling sweat on his skin. Gavin moans long and loud, the sound muffled, and his back curves up, shoulder blades pressing into the mattress, and he's coming, spurting all over his thigh. Fuck. It makes Michael squirm against the sheets, his dick twitching with interest again.

Ryan grins, almost feral, and keeps up a relentless pace that has Gavin whining behind Michael's hand, eyes screwed shut, the deep flush on his cheeks running all the way down to his chest.

Gavin goes limp then, panting hard and hot and wet against Michael's palm, lets Ryan bend his leg back the way he wants to, lets Ryan fuck him steady and hard.

"You could've just asked, you know," Michael says, as conversationally as he can.

Gavin slowly turns his head toward him, his eyes half lidded. "Hmpf?" he asks.

Michael pitches his voice high and does his best-worst English accent. "'Oh, Michael,'" he says, grinning at Gavin's already affronted expression, "'will you please put your hand over my mouth? You know how that gets me all hot and bothered! I just can't come out and fucking _ask_ because I'm a trolly shithead who'd rather provoke people into doing my bidding.'" He takes his hand away and wipes his palm on the sheets, catching Ryan smile from the corner of his eye.

"Michael," Gavin says reproachfully, though it comes out strained what with Ryan's dick buried in his ass, "don't be mean, Michael."

"Oh, you like it when I'm a little mean to you," he says and moves closer for a slow kiss, keeping his fingers pressed to Gavin's jaw.

Above them, Ryan makes a little choking noise and his breath almost explodes out of him; he loses his rhythm as his hips jerk wildly and he gasps and moans and fuck, what a sight that still is, Ryan coming his brains out. The muscles in his arms shake and then he simply gives up on holding himself up over Gavin, though he's still got enough brain power to slump down next to Gavin rather than on top of him, flinging an arm across his stomach.

"Well," Gavin says after a few seconds, "for a first round, that wasn't half bad." He's still breathing fast and sweat pearls on his forehead. He gives a feeble tug on the handcuffs and stills. "I'd give it a solid eight out of ten."

"Shut the hell up," Michael says and bites his shoulder. "Or there's not gonna be a round two."

"Oh, there's gonna be a round two," says Ryan roughly from Gavin's other side. "I'm not anywhere near done."

Michael shivers.

*

It's amazing how much of a difference great sex makes. The next two days pass by in a whirl of shady meetings in the dark, building bombs, more goddamn surveillance and lots of downtime spent at the base staring at screens, but Michael's feeling distinctly less like he wants to blow up the building just to make the misery stop.

Of course, thinking along those lines is a recipe for trouble, an invitation for something to go horribly wrong.

There's a noise coming out of one of Gav's laptops that Michael's never heard before. Neither have the others, judging from the looks they're all shooting the thing.

And Gavin–

Gavin doesn't get pale. Even in midwinter, he's several shades darker than the rest of them. The sun loves him almost as much as he loves the sun. The only times Michael's seen him whiter than Michael himself – and he's pretty fucking pale because it's not like he's got time to work on his damn tan – is when he's bleeding severely. Luckily, that's only happened a handful of times. They're not good memories.

Right now, Gavin's paler than Michael has seen him in months and when he gets up to check the laptop that made the ungodly noise – one of the smaller laptops, one that Gavin always carries with him – he's swaying on his feet.

Ryan frowns. "Gav?"

"You all right, buddy?" Geoff asks, putting down the whiskey he was about to open.

"I..." says Gavin, bending over the laptop. His eyes are wide and scared. Michael's stomach is beginning to tie itself up into knots. "I... no. No, this isn't bloody happ–what the _hell–_ "

Jack puts a gentle hand on Gavin's shoulder and he jumps violently, making her snatch her hand back. "Oh, jeez, sorry, are you oka–"

"I have to go," says Gavin. His voice is raspy and he looks around wildly for a few seconds, his eyes moving across Michael and Ryan and the rest like he's not even seeing them. "I... I have to go, I'm sorry, I've got to go." He slams the tiny laptop shut and picks it up and carries it toward the door, almost stumbling over Jeremy who's spread out on the floor, now frozen, screwdriver jammed into an uncooperative detonator. "Sorry. I just... I've got to go."

"What?" says Geoff, rising, and Michael gets up too, sees Ryan do the same from the corner of his eyes. "Wait, Gavin. Go where?"

"Gav," Michael calls, jogging after him, following him down the hall. Gavin's moving quickly, like he's afraid somebody will pull him back and okay, Michael's pretty tempted, but he's also pretty freaked out right now. This is fucking weird even for Gavin. "Come on, Gavin, hold up. What's going on?"

"Where are you going?" Jack asks.

"You can't _go_ ," says Geoff. "We have a casino to rob! She's out there!" He reaches out to grab Gavin and manages to catch his sleeve, giving it a sharp tug. “We do the heist in less than a week! You can’t go!”

Gavin whirls around, yanking his sleeve loose from Geoff’s grip, and scrubs a shaky hand down his face. "Geoff, really, I am, I'm sorry, I can't do it, I can't do the heist, I've got to–I've got to go. It's an emergency."

"Go where?" Michael asks loudly and Gavin whips his head toward him.

"Carienza. Italy," says Gavin and Michael reels. Fucking _Italy_?

"In Europe?" Michael asks. "Why? What's going on?"

"It's Dan," says Gavin and Michael stops short. Dan. Dan? Michael's met him once, when he called in a favor with Gavin and Gavin took him and Ray along for the ride, but he never really got to know him beyond 'Gavin's childhood friend who sells guns for a living'.

"Dan?" Ryan repeats sharply. "What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know." Gavin sounds frustrated and hopeless. "That's why I've got to go, Ryan. That was..." He swallows hard and briefly closes his eyes. "That was his automated distress signal. Means missed his daily check-in. It's the same system we used back then–" He gestures between himself and Ryan, and his hand is shaking badly, "the same system I'll rig up for us whenever one of us is going to be out of contact for longer than a day or two. That system. It went off. I've got to go," he says, _again_ , and turns and bursts out of the base.

Geoff stands frozen in the hall. "What?" he says, to no one in particular. "He can't just... just go. Gavin! Fuck!"

"I think he just did," says Jeremy quietly. "Who's Dan?"

Michael waves a hand, catches Ryan's eye. "We'll get him back here, Geoff," he says. "Don't worry about it." Fuck, but he's worried about this. Gavin just walked out on _Geoff_. On them.

"You better," Geoff snarls. "We're six days out and there's no way we can do this without our main fucking tech guy. Tie him up if you have to, but bring him back here."

Ryan's already moving past Michael, out the door, and he shields his eyes against the sun and points at a car speeding away in the distance. "There he goes."

"Christ, he's going to crash his fucking car," says Michael, running to his own and getting in, impatiently waiting for Ryan to get into the passenger side. "Did you see his face?"

"I saw," Ryan says grimly, yanking his mask out of his pocket and pulling it over his face as Michael throws the car in traffic and steps on the gas. "Uh, Michael... I don't know about you..." He trails off and it's so uncharacteristic Michael gives him a long, sideways look the second the road is clear ahead for a few seconds. "I mean, as much as I like tying him up, we can't just..."

"No," says Michael, breathing out. "We can't. But Geoff– I mean... Fuck. We'll... we'll talk to him. Talk some sense into him." He doesn't know what he'll do if Gavin insists on running off to Europe to rescue Dan from... who the fuck even knows. Maybe it's just a system failure. Maybe he's on an Italian beach somewhere, enjoying the sun with a hot chick on the towel next to him.

At the apartment building, Michael sees Gavin's car parked across four different spaces – an impressive feat considering the size of the thing – and Ryan's already out of his car before he's even fully stopped.

"Wait up, Ryan," he calls, and of course the elevator takes for-fucking-ever again before it gets to the first floor. Michael's tempted to take the stairs, or scale the fucking building, or whatever, and Ryan's completely forgotten he's still wearing his mask as they pile in and hammer the button for the sixth floor.

Gavin's packing when they get inside the apartment. Michael can hear him moving around, the wheels of his suitcase dragging across the carpet.

"Shit," he mutters under his breath. "Gavin?"

Gavin appears in the doorway to the bedroom, looking mutinous and tense. "Don't, Michael. Ryan. Please. I've got to do this. Tell Geoff I'm sorry."

"Just tell me what's going on," says Michael, taking a step closer, stopping when Gavin raises a hand. "I'm not going to stop you. I promise, Gav. You wanna go, you can go. We're not here to drag you back."

Gavin glances between them and blows out a long breath before turning and heading back inside the bedroom. The suitcase is open on the bed and clothes have been haphazardly thrown into its direction. "I already said," says Gavin, going into his underwear drawer. "It's an automated signal. Every day, every _single day_ since I went back to America and joined up with Geoff, Dan signs in and lets the system know he's safe and in one piece. It just went off. Which means that... that..." He straightens up and puts a hand out and Ryan and Michael both move closer at once, but Gavin waves them off. He doesn't do that easily. Or at all. Michael's heart aches. "He missed a check-in," says Gavin abruptly, leaning heavily against the wardrobe.

"He missed one check-in?" Michael asks, for clarification. Lead settles in his stomach.

Gavin turns tired eyes toward him. "One is too many, Michael."

"We know," Ryan says quietly. "So yesterday's check-in came from Italy? And there was nothing today?"

"Carienza," says Gavin, the word rolling off his tongue. "No idea where it is, but I suppose I'll find out when I book my flight."

"Why was he there?" Ryan asks.

"I don't know." Gavin drops his hand. "I don't know anything, Ryan. All I know is that he–he missed his check-in." He shakes his head. "I realize I'm bollocking everything up for everybody," he says, miserably. "All the work we've done is wasted if I leave. But I can't... I just can't stay here while Dan is... out there, somewhere. He might be hurt. He might be–" He doesn't finish his sentence, just stumbles over to the bed and sits down hard, burying his face in his hands.

"He's not," Ryan says firmly.

Michael glares at him. Don't fucking say shit like that when you don't know for sure. He sits down next to Gavin and puts his arm around his waist. Gavin leans into him, thank Christ, not pushing him away like Michael half-expected. Gav's a tactile guy and seeing him skittish and distant hurts Michael somewhere deep inside. "Okay. So. Italy. We're gonna find him, Gav."

They hadn't discussed it in the car, not really. But Michael knows Ryan pretty well by now and he thinks, he hopes, that Ryan knows what kind of guy Michael is. What Michael wouldn't do for Gavin. How far he'd go for that little British asshole who came into Michael's life and made it go in directions he never thought possible. Carienza? Michael's gonna raze it down to the ground if it means finding Gavin's old friend.

Ryan kneels down in front of Gavin and puts his hands on Gavin's knees. "You're not gonna go haring off to Europe on your own, all right?"

Christ. Michael sucks in a breath. They're really going to do this. His heart stutters in his chest and his palms start sweating up. He likes Geoff. He's a good boss, as far as crazy drunk crime bosses go. He really, really doesn't want to cross him.

But.

This is Gavin, and Gavin's hurting. It's a surprisingly easy choice, he finds.

Gavin's raised his head and is staring at Ryan as if he's got two heads. He then looks at Michael. "I... what? You can't come with me!"

Michael shrugs. "Why not?"

"Because... Because!" says Gavin. "We've a heist! Next week!"

"It's not gonna happen without you," Ryan points out and Gavin cringes, curling in on himself. "If you're going, we might as well be there and help you because we're not pulling that heist without you opening doors and taking out cameras."

Gavin opens his mouth, closes it again and presses the palms of his hands against his eyes. "Didn't Geoff send you after me to talk some sense into me?"

"I guess he did," says Michael. "We had other plans."

"We can't just..." Gavin gestures at all of them. "All three of us. To Europe."

"We're coming with you," Michael says firmly. "You're our–our... You're ours. We're in this together."

Ryan reaches up and cradles his jaw. "If someone hurt Dan in any way, we're going to find them and I'm gonna rip off their limbs one by one and gift wrap them and put them on a little display for you, all right?"

Gavin chokes out a short laugh. "Bloody hell, Ryan."

"Disturbing," Michael mutters, mostly for show.

Ryan pushes himself up and kisses Gavin's forehead. "If we're going to do this, we better make it fast before Geoff sends anyone else over to check up on us. Okay?"

"All right," Gavin agrees. A little more color's returned to his cheeks and the smile he manages is halfway to genuine for a second before it falls. "Geoff is not going to be happy with us. At all." He looks between Ryan and Michael and then down at the carpet. "He might fire you. Please consider what 'fire' means in our line of business."

"Oh, he's definitely going to kill us," says Michael cheerfully and he reaches up and ruffles Gavin's hair. No point in worrying about that or making Gav worry about it. "Chill, dude. We'll deal with it when we get back, okay?"

"Solve our problems one by one," says Ryan, getting to his feet and extending a hand. "Now, what's next?"

"Uh," says Gavin, letting himself be pulled up. "Packing, I suppose. Booking my flight–our flights. Figure out where Carienza even is. Italy's a big country."

"Shit," Ryan says. "We're gonna need passports, don't we?"

Crap. Michael's got ID. He's got tons of ID cards, actually, some better than others. He doesn't have a passport. He's never been out of the United States. He's never had a need for one. "That could be a problem. We can get passports, but it'll take a few days." If they can get it that fast. Passports are hard to fake. "Shit. How are we going to get out of the fucking country?" Not to mention that 'a few days' might be too long for Dan. Gavin's got a passport, though. Gavin could leave.

He could leave without them.

"Right," says Gavin and he moves past Ryan and Michael, toward the empty space next to the double bookcases. He plucks a switch knife from his boot and jams it into the wall, cutting horizontally through the textured wallpaper with ease.

"What the fuck?" Michael says, spreading his hands. "What the hell are you doing?"

Gavin reaches up to the cut edge of wallpaper and tears it down and off, crumbling it up and tossing it aside. Underneath the wallpaper, at shoulder height, is... a goddamn safe. It's about the size of a small fridge and there's a keypad, a fingerprint pad and an iris scanner. Jesus.

"You had another safe back there?" Michael asks. He knows about the one in the back of Gav's closet – hell, he uses that one, keeps some of his spare weapons, ID cards and walk-around money in it.

Ryan's staring too. "How many safes do you have in this place?"

"Three," says Gavin, leaning in toward the iris scanner. "I like being prepared." He opens the safe and steps back and gestures at it. "Everything you need." He's not quite looking at them when he says it and Michael would almost think it _shy_ if he didn't know any better.

He steps closer to the safe and moves aside to let Ryan take a look too. He doesn't quite know what he's expecting, but it isn't this. There's neat little stacks of passports on top of thick manila folders and binders. Michael reaches out and picks up a random passport and flips it open – Jeremy's face stares up at him, but the name on the document is Nicholas Robins. The passport feels slick and heavy and goddamn _real_ in his hands. There's a cardboard box pushed all the way back and when Michael tugs it forward to take a look into it, he finds at least a dozen different types of wallets – expensive, cheap, leather, some made of cloth and looking old and worn – with all kinds of membership cards and credit cards printed with the fake names. Used fucking wallets with the kind of crap people carry around with them all the time.

Jesus. Gavin's thought of everything.

"These are yours," says Ryan. He sounds baffled and a little uncertain as he hands Michael three passports. "Vincent?"

"My middle name," Michael says automatically, putting Jeremy's fake passport back and grabbing his own. "What is all this?" He looks at his own face, at the watermark, and rubs his thumb over the fake name. Vincent Smith. The second one is Michael Archer; the third Richard Long. "You named me Dick Long?"

"Gavin," says Ryan, rifling through all the passports. He sounds a little stunned. "You got these for all of us?"

"Like I said," says Gavin behind them, his voice a little unsteady. "Everything you need. Passports, visas, European ID cards, paperwork for a bunch of different countries, everything."

"Holy shit." Michael turns back to him. "You did all this?"

Gavin shrugs.

"Why?"

"Just in case," he says. "In case we ever needed to get out of the US fast."

"For _everyone_?" Michael says, picking up another random passport. This one's Ryan and the name is just James Drake. "This must have cost you a fortune, Gavin."

Another shrug. "I've got money," he says, unconcerned. "And I know people who owe me favors – well, _owed_ , because I cashed in on a number of them with this – and people who know people who can get me the things I need to... to keep everyone safe." He shifts his weight awkwardly and says, "so pick a passport. Problem solved."

Jesus. Michael grabs the Dick Long passport and associated shitty wallet because it makes him laugh and gets a bag from the closet. It's then that he realizes packing is going to be easy because most of his shit has migrated over from his apartment a while ago, but he decides not to think about it too much. How long has it been since he slept in his own bed at his own apartment...? A while. A long while.

"Pack light," says Ryan. "Whatever else we need, we can probably get there." He's tossing seemingly random clothes and toiletries into a bag as well and casts a quick glance at Gavin.

Gavin, who is sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring at his laptop like it holds the answers to everything. "Carienza is a city of a hundred and forty thousand people in the north of Italy, close to the French border," he says. "Seems like it's a tourist trap; it's got canals like Venice and there's a pretty sizable lake less than ten miles out of town." He wets his dry, cracked lips. "Dan's check-in yesterday traces back to the center of town, a hotel or a bed and breakfast or something like that."

"It's a start," Michael says, moving to Gavin's small suitcase. "Come on, where's your shit?"

"Just a sec, Michael," Gavin says, hands flying over his keyboard. "Going to book our flights now." His phone – not his real one, a burner – starts ringing and he absently picks it up and checks the screen. He makes a little sound and Michael jerks his head up.

"What?" Michael asks.

Gavin turns the screen so Michael can see who's calling. "It's Dan."

Ryan's at the bed in two big steps, a hand closing over Gavin's. "Careful," he says and Gavin looks at up him, confused for a second before his expression shifts to understanding and he closes his eyes briefly. "Might not be what it looks like."

"How is Dan calling?" Michael hisses and shuts up when Gavin glances at him and puts a finger to his lips.

Gavin answers the phone and immediately puts it on speaker, laying it on the edge of the laptop keyboard. Michael and Ryan crowd closer, Michael putting a knee up on the bed and Ryan squatting down to lean in.

“What’s up, Dan?” Gavin asks carefully, keeping his tone light.

“Hey, G!” says a vaguely familiar English voice.  “You all right there?”

“I’m good, D, how about you?”

“Yeah, you know,” says Dan, “doin’ all right for myself, keeping busy, all that jazz… It’s been a right week for me, though, you wouldn’t believe how busy I’ve been.”

“Oh?” says Gavin.

“Yeah,” says Dan, “and I know you must be busy too, but here’s the thing: I’m doing this thing in Italy and I could really use your help. I’ve made a right muddle of things and could use an extra hand or two to help me out.”

Michael glances at Ryan, who's watching Gavin closely. Their eyes meet briefly. Michael shrugs, Ryan pinches the bridge of his nose. The conversation sounds so normal, but Gavin's face is anything but.

“I dunno, D, how big is it? We’re kind of working on a big job here, not sure if the man in charge can spare me, especially not if I have to fly out to… wherever you are.”

“Carienza,” says Dan. “Northern Italy. And I know things are difficult on your end, but you know I wouldn’t ask you to help me out if I didn’t really need your help. If it’s any help, the weather here is lovely, you could work on your tan while you’re here.”

“Carienza? Never heard of it.” Gavin sucks in a slight breath and turns huge eyes toward Michael and Ryan. “I’ll talk to the man in charge and see if I can’t make it over there for a few days, D. Won’t be able to fly out today, though.”

“Aw, man,” says Dan. “It’s kind of time sensitive, you know?”

“Sounds like it, but you know the boss. Day after tomorrow, I can go, and I’ll meet you in Carienza the day after. Best I can do.”

There’s a short pause and then Dan comes back. “Yeah, all right, I can hang in there for an extra day. Appreciate it, G.”

“No worries,” says Gavin. “Call you when I get there, Danny.” He hangs up and blows out a long, shuddery breath. "Dan's screwed," he says and presses his fists against his eyes. "Shite."

"He's been taken?" Ryan asks.

Gavin nods. "He kept calling me G, which nobody does, least of all him. I don't call him Danny either, I never do that, so it's a way for us to figure out if the other's making a call under duress. Whoever's got Dan, they made him call me."

"So they've got Dan and they also want you?" says Michael, trying to put it together. "You're a popular guy, Gavvy."

"Wish I wasn't." The smile Gavin offers up is mirthless. "I bought us an extra day, at least. We leave now, we can be in Italy in twenty hours, give or take. There's a flight leaving to an airport in southern France in three hours and we can drive across the border from there."

"No direct flights to Carienza?" Michael asks, frowning.

"There are, but I don't want to take any chances. If they're out for me, too, and they've got Dan's phone, they might know my real name and my face. I don't want to go through Carienza airport if that's the case."

"At least now we know," Ryan says gently, touching Gavin's face. "And Dan knows that you know, okay? He calls less than hour after the distress signal's gone off and he used your code. Dan knows that you know and whoever has got him doesn't know that. Hopefully. We'll have the element of surprise."

"Right," says Gavin, his face white. "You're right."

"Okay," Ryan says, stroking a thumb across Gavin's unshaven jaw. "Okay. We're more prepared now. We know he's still alive. We know where he is. We know they also want or need you for some reason, and they're going to keep Dan alive until you're there. This whole situation sucks dicks, but we have more to work with now."

"All right," says Gavin. "You're right." He runs both hands through his hair. "All right. I'm going to book our flights and get in touch with some people in Italy who may be able to help us out."

Okay. They're doing this. They've got passports, they've got the outline of a plan.

Italy, here they come.

*  
  
“Michael,” says Gavin and his hand curls around Michael’s wrist, bony but warm. Thin fingers, callouses, short nails. Michael knows their touch, knows how they feel against his skin. Right now their press is insistent, hard. “You don’t… Ryan, you two don’t have to…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, just looks away and lets go of Michael’s wrists slumps down in the backseat.

Ryan parks their stolen car in a random parking spot in long-term parking at the airport and shuts off the engine, half-turning in his seat to look at Gavin. “We know we don’t have to.”

“We want to,” Michael adds. “Idiot. Do we really have to go over this again?”

“I just want you to--” Gavin bites his lip. “He’s going to be really, really minged off, you know.”

Michael shrugs. “He’s been minged off before.”

“No,” Gavin insists, “not like this time. We’re running out of a heist. I’m dragging you off to Italy.”

“First of all,” Ryan says, “the heist can wait, no matter what Geoff says. It’s a casino. It’ll always have a shit-ton of money in the bank. Second, this is more important than a heist anyway. More important than Geoff’s weird revenge scheme against that woman who is totally not an ex. Third…”

“Third,” says Michael, “do you really think you could ‘drag’ us off to anywhere, let alone fucking Italy, if we didn’t want to go? Come on, Gav. We’re doing this because we want to.”

“You gotta trust us,” Ryan says.

“I do,” says Gavin and now he’s looking at them again rather than his hands clutched in his lap. “I do.” He laughs a little and it trails off. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you... too. Either of you.”

“You have our backs.” Michael glances over at Ryan. “We have yours. We’ll be fine, Gavin.”

Gavin takes a deep breath and Michael can see him force himself to relax. “All right.”

“All right,” Ryan echoes, opening his door. “Let’s do this, then.”

No turning back now.

*

Michael is standing on French land. He taps his foot experimentally. Nope. Doesn't feel at all different from American soil. It's hot, but still cooler than Los Santos, and he and Ryan draw some curious looks as they stand outside the terminal waiting for Gavin to rent a car to get them to Italy.

There's a certain irony in the only person without a legitimately earned driver's license renting them a car.

Ryan's shifting his weight a little, eyes flitting around like there's trained assassins waiting to jump them. Ryan's rarely at ease out in public, especially when he's not being the Vagabond.

They'd all slept on the plane. Gavin hadn't really wanted to, obsessed with trying to figure out what had happened with Dan, why Dan was in Italy in the first place, bent so closely over his laptop it'd made Michael's back hurt just looking at it, and it'd been almost a fight trying to get him to get some sleep. In the end, it had been Ryan and Michael pointing out that hitting the ground running in Italy would be good, and getting some damn sleep on the plane would be better than sleepwalking through whatever Italy was going to throw at them. Michael had put Gavin's laptop in the overhead compartment and he and Ryan had sat and watched Gavin until he'd finally fallen asleep, the lines in his face smoothing out, before getting some shut-eye themselves.

Gavin eventually pulls up in a small but nice looking blue... European car, a brand Michael's never even heard of, and gets out to climb into the backseat instead. "One of you drive," he says, "it's an automatic. I've already plugged in Carienza into the sat nav, just follow directions."

They pile what little luggage they have in the trunk and Ryan and Michael look at each other.

"I have a really terrible sense of direction, as you must have realized by now," Michael says. "Even with a GPS telling me where to go we're liable to end up in, like, Sweden somehow."

"Sweden?" Ryan laughs a little. "You know that's way up north, right? I'll drive then," he says and gets behind the wheel, rolling the seat back to make room for his longer legs. "Uh, they drive on the right side of the road, right?"

"Right," says Michael, getting into the passenger seat. "Only weird English assholes would drive on the left." He glances over his shoulder just in time to see Gavin make a face at him. It's comforting, means Gavin's feeling a little bit better. He looks at the GPS display. "Only an hour plus to get to Italy? Sweet."

"I can make that forty-five minutes," says Ryan and puts his foot down on the gas.

"Just don't get us pulled over," Gavin mutters from the backseat, pulling out a laptop and another burner phone.

"Oh, ye of little faith," says Ryan, turning onto the highway as the friendly navigation voice tells them to.

"I'm just saying," says Gavin. "None of us speak French and the French sure as hell don't speak English. Shall we not make this any harder on ourselves than it already is?"

"Noted," says Ryan, with a quick look in the rear view mirror. "Where exactly are we going? Do you have an address?"

"I will in a bit." Gavin grabs his phone and dials a number. After a few seconds, he launches into Italian without even bothering to identify himself, the words first coming out hesitantly but then quickly speeding up as he gains confidence. Michael shakes his head and glances at Ryan, who's too focused on the foreign road to pay much attention to anything else in the car.

It's a little weird, hearing those strange words coming out of Gavin's so very English mouth, with his very English accent. Michael knows Gavin speaks Italian, he's just never heard him do it. Los Santos has a small Italian population, and an even smaller portion of that population do the same things they do, and their streams have never crossed. They might, one day. Italians in larger cities run said bigger cities. Probably only a matter of time before they set their sights on LS.

Michael shifts down in his chair, tries to get a little more comfortable and turns up the A/C. "There's already signs," he says, as they pass one that indicates the French border is 68 kilometers away. "It's 68 kilometers. That sounds like a lot."

"It's about forty miles, I think," says Ryan. "Not too bad."

Michael starts thinking about what's ahead. There's still so many unknowns. Where Dan is. Who's got him and why. How many people they're gonna be facing and how good they are at shooting. Michael assumes they're pretty good criminals; they grabbed Dan, and he Dan is not the kind of guy that's easily grabbed.

"Right," Gavin says a minute later. "I've got an address." He passes a piece of paper forward and Michael takes it, looking at the address scribbled there in Gavin's rounded scrawl. "It's a safe house of sorts where we can stay as long as we need. There's a woman there called Bernadetta who can also provide us with guns should we need them. I think we might need them," he adds.

"Definitely," Michael says, punching the address into the GPS. "Feels weird not to have anything on me right now." Excellent fake passports are one thing, but there isn't an airliner in the world that would let Michael get on board with his knives or his C4. "How'd you find this... this Bernadetta? Do you know her?"

"Never met her," says Gavin, rubbing his forehead. "She's a friend of a friend, etcetera, etcetera, you know how this works. She's distantly related to one of my cousins, I think. She's reliable, been in the business for years. Wherever her place is, we should be safe there."

"Does she know anything about Dan?" Michael asks.

"Doubt it." Gavin tries to stretch his legs in the backseat, feet kicking at the back of Michael's seat. "She might know something about a foreigner getting snatched, though." He's quiet for a minute. "I just wish I knew what was going on. Why was Dan there in the first place? I'd never even heard of this town before yesterday."

"Got any idea who might be after the two of you?" Ryan jerks hard on the wheel as they get passed by someone going at least twice the speed limit. "Somebody with a grudge, survivor from an old job, somebody you used to work for, anybody like that...?"

"I mean, we have made enemies," Gavin says quietly. "Part of the job, innit? But without more information, I can't even begin to guess who might be having it out for me and Dan."

"Also," Michael points out, "doesn't have to be something the both of you did. Could just be someone trying to get Gavin through Dan, if they knew the two of you were friends. Be like grabbing me or Ryan or anyone on the crew, only on this side of the Atlantic."

"God," says Gavin, and his voice sounds hollow enough that Michael unclips his seat belt and struggles his way into the backseat. Great job, Michael, putting those thoughts into his head. He could kick himself right now. "Michael... This could be all my fault?"

"It's not," Michael says, putting the laptop on the rear window shelf, "it's those assholes' fault. The asshole. Whoever snatched Dan. You didn't do this, Gav." He puts his arm around Gavin and pulls him close and kisses the top of his stupid, worrying head. "Don't go all stupid on me about this. We need you to think straight. Dan needs you to think straight, all right?"

"I know," Gavin tells Michael's shirt and he presses closer for a second before struggling up. "I know. It's just... damn. I can't narrow this thing down at all."

"Yet," says Ryan. "You can't narrow this thing down _yet_. You will. We'll get to Carienza and we'll figure this thing out."

Gavin half-turns and snags his laptop back, opening it and getting his phone again. His face looks harder now, tense. Older. "Gonna make some more calls. See if I can't dig up anything else before we get to Carienza."

That's how they pass the miles to Italy. Ryan driving and occasionally swearing at French and Italian drivers; Michael and Gavin in the backseat, Michael leaning comfortably against Gavin, listening to him making calls in English and Italian. He watches the mountains in the distance as they grow closer and tries to decipher French and later Italian road signs.

Crossing the border is nothing, no checks, no nothing. One minute they're in France, the next, they're in Italy and all that really changes is the look of the houses and the small towns they're passing. Everything in Carienza, when they get there a good ten minutes later, looks old and used and reasonably well-maintained. The sun glints brightly off white and yellow walls and dark red roofs. Traffic thickens and the GPS has to re-route them three times because of road construction.

"This... can't be right. Can it?" Ryan asks when the voice cheerfully announces they've arrived at their destination.

Michael pulls himself out of the half-sleep he'd fallen into and rubs at his eyes. "We're here?"

"Apparently." Ryan leans forward and cranes his neck. "Gavin?"

"Yeah, gimme a sec, gonna look up the gate code."

Gate code? Michael blinks furiously and then just stares. "This... is a _safehouse_? Gavin?"

It's... it's a fucking mansion, basically. There's a huge wrought iron gate, a driveway so long Michael can't see the end of it, and a three-storey red-and-white fucking _villa_ rises against the horizon. It looks like it's worth several million bucks – euros, whatever – with its neat lawns, meticulously kept gardens and well-maintained trees.

Michael's been in many, many safe houses over the years. All of them, without exception, have been true shitholes. Some of them didn't even have running water and while staying at two of them, he had no electricity and nearly froze to death in the night. No safehouse ever had been a pleasant stay.

Gavin taps on a burner phone acquired at a random French post office and scribbles something on a piece of paper, handing it off to Michael. "There you go," he says, sounding pretty smug about it. "We're here. This'll open the gate. There's a number pad on the left."

Ryan whips around and gazes at him in disbelief. "This is where we're staying?"

"It's the address they gave me and if the gate code works... I asked specifically for an out-of-the-way place with high speed internet." Gavin shrugs and grins, an actual real grin. "It's amazing what can happen when you throw money at a problem. Open the gate, Michael."

"Jesus," Michael mutters and he resists the urge to pinch himself. He gets out of the car and heads for the pad, punching in the five-digit code and getting back in the car once the gate's opened and closed behind it.

"Look," Gavin says as Ryan slowly drives the car along the massive driveway, "I needed a place to stay with decent food and internet so I wouldn't be distracted by smaller issues like drug dealers in the place next door or cops coming knocking or anything like that. No one will disturb us here."

"Who does it belong to?" Michael asks. "This must have cost a fortune."

"I didn't ask," says Gavin. "Whoever owns it is not here right now and I'm paying good money to have it be mine for the next couple of days. Bernadetta should be here already, I think."

"That her?" Michael asks, pointing as the front door swings open and a woman steps out.

"Must be," says Gavin. "Okay, use the names on your passports, Richard, James. I'm Matthew. She won't be around for long, but please be careful when she is. She's trustworthy, but there's still no need to give her more information than she needs."

The woman stops at the top of the stairs leading down to the driveway and folds her hands in front of her stomach. She smiles at them as they climb out of the car and calls something in Italian.

Gavin answers; it sounds cautious to Michael's ear and he watches as Gavin and the woman eye each other up for a moment, exchanging what are maybe code words or some such spy bullshit. He's in a fucking spy movie right now. Un-fucking-believable.

"Right," says Gav, turning back to them. "This is Bernadetta."

"Hello," Bernadetta says. She's maybe forty, with gray streaks in her black hair, and huge brown eyes that Michael thinks probably don't miss much. She's about a head shorter than Michael and dressed in a silvery-white dress that's a striking contrast with her dark skin tone. She's both noticeable and utterly non-descriptive because Michael's seen dozens of women much like her when they were passing through town. There's something in her eyes, though, the tilt of her head, the way she shifts her weight that makes Michael pay attention to her.

Despite her appearance, this woman feels dangerous.

"You speak English?" Ryan asks.

Bernadetta nods. "Yes. It will make communication easier. Come. Follow me. I will show you the house."

They get their bags from the car and follow Bernadetta inside. It's cool here, the A/C running at full blast, and dark. The windows are shut against the sun and the curtains drawn. All the light is coming from indoor lamps in the ceilings and the walls, with smaller lamps dotted on end tables and side boards. Michael doesn't know much about interior decorating and he cares even less, but everything seems matched and expensive.

"Living room, kitchen, dining room, library, downstairs office," Bernadetta says, waving at the rooms as they pass them. "Bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs, the gym and the pool downstairs. There are plenty of bedrooms, so there will be no need to share."

Michael shares a look with Ryan and Gavin and shrugs a little. She's not going to be here, so who's gonna know? Also, a gym and a pool? It's a shame they're not here on vacation; Michael could get used to having a pool around. Maybe he'll toss that idea to Geoff.

Provided Geoff doesn't kill them the second they're back in Los Santos.

"Please leave your luggage here, I will show you to the arms room. The infirmary is located right next to it as well."

Arms room? Now that sounds interesting. That sounds right up Michael's alley.

"Holy shit," he says a couple of minutes later. The arms room is located behind a giant oak bookcase because he's literally in a James Bond movie right now, and it's a brightly lit pale yellow room stocked to the fucking gills with everything they might possibly need. Miniguns, grenades, sniper rifles, heavy pistols, SMGs, the room's got it all. There's drawers stocked with ammo, grenade launchers in a case against the far wall and Michael catches Ryan's wide-eyed stare before the two of them throw themselves at the treasure.

Gavin hangs back, talking quietly to Bernadetta.

"I'm just not going to ask," Ryan mutters.

"You don't know how he knows these people?" Michael asks under his breath, his fingers sliding across a stack of C4. He figured Ryan might know more than him; he's heard a lot about the time he and Gavin were together half a decade ago, but no doubt there's a shitton of stuff they haven't gotten around to sharing with him.

"Nah," says Ryan. "We never took jobs outside the US. I mean, I knew he was half Italian, knew he spoke the language, but I had only the vaguest ideas about his European contacts. It never came up, there was never any need for them until he took the UK job." He picks up a rifle and checks the scope. Michael watches his fingers against the metal and his mouth goes a little dry. Ryan notices him staring and grins. "Focus, _Richard_. Job."

Right. Michael half turns and looks to Gavin, who's listening quietly to something Bernadetta is explaining to him. She's about a head and a half shorter than he is, but she's definitely commanding his full attention.

"I wish I had contacts like these," he says quietly. "This place is fucking huge."

"It's got its own gun room." Ryan runs a hand through some strands that have escaped his ponytail and looks around and shakes his head. "I've definitely been in worse safehouses. Hell, I've murdered people in worse _mansions_."

"No shit." Michael fully turns and leans back against the wall, watching Gavin. Gavin briefly catches his eye, gives him a little smile before asking Bernadetta something. As fun as it is to hear Gavin speak a foreign language, Michael's feeling a little on edge from not being able to understand their conversation. All he's got is body language; he's good with Gavin's – great, actually, Gav's pretty much an open book to him – but Bernadetta is giving him nothing. She's a damn statue, polite smile plastered on her face.

"All right, Michael, let's figure out what we might need," says Ryan. "Depending on what Gavin can find out here today, we might be moving soon."

No time to dawdle and try to stare down a forty-something Italian woman, who, let's face it, in all probability had been stared down by people way taller and way more scary than Michael. He knows he doesn't cut an intimidating figure, but he also knows that if he really opens his fucking mouth, people tend to change their tune pretty goddamn quick nevertheless.

He and Ryan bend over the weapons collection and he tries to ignore Gavin for the most part, keeping half an ear out for changes in volume and intonation just in case. They select a decent handful of weapons that might come in handy, including C4, grenades, a sniper rifle and some very, very nice knives that make Ryan's eyes light up in a way that's kinda terrifying, and also a little hot.

When Gavin joins them, Bernadetta has gone. Gavin looks a bit wild around the eyes, a touch breathless, and Michael nudges him.

"You okay?" he asks.

"Yeah," says Gavin and he blows out a breath. "Got some leads, maybe. Carienza is a tourist town and occasionally some of those tourists do disappear. Bernadetta hasn't seen or heard anything like that happening in the past week, but she's going to ask around and she's going to get back to me by tonight. She's left now. The house is ours. Kitchen's fully stocked. I'm gonna do a bug sweep just to be on the safe side."

Ryan raises an eyebrow. "You think that's necessary?"

Gavin shrugs. "I'm told Bernadetta and her people are reliable, but I don't know them, so..." He trails off. "Better safe than sorry, right?"

"All right," says Ryan. "You're not wrong. Michael and I got this covered. Do your thing, then we'll eat something before we start trying to find Dan, okay?" Gavin opens his mouth to say something, but Ryan raises a hand. "If you want to say we gotta start immediately... I don't disagree, but we have to eat, Gav." His voice is incredibly gentle. Michael feels the pull of it in his chest. "We gotta keep our strength up. You know you lose concentration when you're hungry. We all do. We have to stay at our best. Dan needs us at our best."

Gavin lets out a shivery breath and nods. "Okay."

"Okay," says Ryan, pulling him close and kissing him. "We're gonna find him."

Or die trying, Michael thinks.

*

Ryan cooks pasta – "hey, when in Italy, right?" – after he spends, by Michael's count, no less than seven minutes boggling at how packed the fridge is.

"Seems almost a crime to ransack it," he comments, rummaging through the vegetable drawer. "Look at all this shit. You could feed an orphanage for a month with all this crap. This is the greatest safehouse I've ever stayed at."

Gavin's not listening to him, or hearing Michael; he's got a laptop set up at the kitchen table and he's staring at it, resting his head on one hand, the other hand moving between keyboard and a tiny-ass wireless mouse.

“Getting anywhere, Gav?” Michael asks, leaning his palms flat on the table.

“Hm?” Gavin looks up at him and blinks. “What?”

“Got anything?” Michael repeats. “You were trying to track down where Dan’s call came from, right? Got anything?” It’s something Gavin, to his frustration, couldn’t do on the plane, and it’s one of the things he wanted to work on first when they got settled.

“No,” Gavin says, biting his lip and turning his eyes back to his screen. “They took some precautions to stop people like me from doing this.” He glances between Ryan at the fridge and Michael leaning on the table and lets out a little sigh. “I found the hotel Dan was staying at, so that’s something at least.”

"Food first, though," Michael says, standing on tiptoes to search the upper cupboards for plates and glasses.

"Food," Ryan agrees, turning to the burner.

Gavin’s attention is already back on his laptop.

Ryan's a pretty decent cook. Michael's not much of one, but he wants to learn, so he hangs around Ryan as he cooks, trying not to get in his way. Ryan makes him chop the vegetables, which is the shittiest job, but it gives him something to do that's not staring at Gavin, so he takes it without complaint.

The pasta tastes amazing and Michael scarfs down two whole plates before Gavin's even finished his first.

"You're mental," Gavin informs him.

"It's good food!" says Michael, grinning.

"You gonna go for thirds?" Gavin asks.

"Don't mind if I do." Michael piles a little more pasta on his plate and very generously lets Ryan have what's left. Ryan gives him a pretty sarcastic thumbs up. "No more for you, Gavvy?"

"I'm good, thanks." Gavin pushes his plate away and pulls his laptop closer with his other hand. "I think we should go check out the hotel Dan was staying at when we've finished eating." He glances at their plates and Michael eats a little faster. "It's a touristy hotel so we shouldn't have any issues getting in; there's no way the front desk will know everyone that's currently staying there. I'm in their booking system and one of Dan's aliases is still registered as staying there, in room 636. If he's here under an alias, chances are good he came here for some kind of job."

"Maybe the room will tell us more," says Ryan.

"Maybe," Gavin agrees. "He's not the kind of bloke to leave anything regarding his, uh, specialty just lying about where anybody could potentially find it, though."

"It's a good first step," says Michael. "Gotta start somewhere."

"Yeah, but we've already started. We're here, aren't we?" Gavin closes the lid of his laptop a little harder than necessary and gets up, going for a small bag he left near the kitchen door. "All the way to the city he was grabbed in and we still don't know anything." He carries the bag over to the table and reaches into it to come up with a handful of earpieces, wired up to nothing. It kind of makes them look like earbuds for phones, which Michael guesses is the point in case customs started to ask questions. Gavin yanks out the wires and tosses them back in the bag, handing them the earpieces. "New ones," he says. "Rush job, but they've got push-to-talk buttons or you can just have them on at all times now. Pick your poison. Also traceable by GPS."

They're plain black, none of Gav's usual flair in them, but they'll do. He thinks these are the ones Gav had been working on before Geoff put them all on the Lucky Swine job. It feels like months ago rather than a day. Michael pops his in, leaves it on always-on. Easier that way.

"Nothing's going to happen to Dan just now," Ryan says.

"Yeah, they're waiting for you to show up, right? Dan's safe," Michael adds. "We also just got here, Gav. Off a fourteen-hour flight."

"I _know_ ," Gavin says, his hands curling into fists. "I just want to be out there, right now, trying to find him. Dan is safe – for now. We hope. If they don't get impatient and just kill him or–"

"They won't," says Ryan, getting up and coming to a stop in front of Gavin. "Not when they've gone out of their way to keep him around so he could get you here. I mean, you can't even go where they want you until he contacts you again, right? So he's safe right now."

"But we've got to find him fast," says Gavin, looking up at him. His voice is shaky. "I don't want to walk into that trap, as clear as it is to us right now. I don't know who they are and what they want. I don't know if they're willing to kill or if it's something else they're after. I don't know _anything_."

"We're gonna go right now," Ryan promises, sliding his hand into Gavin's neck and giving it a gentle squeeze, drawing him close. He gives Michael a quick look over Gavin's bent head and Michael gets up, too, grabbing Gavin's laptop for him and mournfully abandoning the dirty plates and pots and pans before he can rinse them and put them in the dishwasher this kitchen no doubt has.

They pile back into the rental car, Gavin up front this time while Michael drives and Ryan stretches out in the backseat, sliding low. Michael suspects he doesn't feel particularly happy being out and about in a strange town without his mask or face paint on, though he's got the mask stuffed in a pocket. Also, nobody knows them here. Nobody's going to connect Ryan's very nice face to the terrifying Vagabond that roams the streets of Los Santos an ocean away.

The hotel is easy to find, it's just a big fucking nightmare driving in this tourist town. Michael can only go so fast, the roads swarming with other rental cars, scooters and blissfully ignorant pedestrians who just cross whenever and without looking. At least his incessant swearing is making Gavin laugh a little.

They stash the car in an alleyway between two large, busy roads not far from the hotel. They leave their heavy weaponry in it because, well, sniper rifles aren’t particularly inconspicuous and nobody wants to deal with the Italian police. Gavin glances back at the car as they make their way to the street the hotel's situated on.

"Looks kind of... suspicious, no?" he says. "Rental car in an alley, French plates..."

"Just looks like an asshole tourist needed a place to park," Michael says. "We might get a ticket if it gets spotted."

"Might get towed," says Gavin.

Michael shrugs. "So? It's a rental under an alias. We can also grab a new car. I haven't forgotten how to hotwire, you know."

"Yeah, okay, you make a good point," says Gavin, bumping against him and smiling at him.

Michael takes a second to grab Gavin's hand and giving it a quick squeeze. "Sometimes I manage to do that."

Ryan stops when they hit the street and looks at them. "We should probably split up, right? Go in one by one?"

"Or two by one," Gavin suggests. The hotel is an eight-storey building, rising high into the sky and blocking most of the street from the late afternoon sun, thankfully. It's still swelteringly hot, even in the shadows, and Michael's shirt is sticking to his back. "I'll go in first, you two wait a few minutes and then follow. I'm guessing room 636 is on the sixth floor. The European sixth floor, as we are in Italy." He taps at his ear and Michael hears him do it through the comms.

"Needed to make that clarification, huh?" Michael asks, and Gavin and Ryan just look at each other, Gavin smug and Ryan vaguely embarrassed. "So there's a story there."

"Sometimes I have a hard time translating British to actual English," Ryan says. "That was one of those times."

"Tell you all about it after we get out of this damned country with Dan," Gavin promises. "I'm going in now. Wait five minutes."

Michael looks over at the hotel entrance when Gavin crosses the street and gets swept up in foot traffic. Lots of people coming and going; families, two-somes and small groups of friends. A mixed crowd, too, not just young people or old fucks. The hotel seems to cater to just about anyone. Good. It'll make them stand out less.

"All right," Gavin's voice says a few minutes later. He sounds a little out of breath. Must have taken the stairs. "I'm in. Nobody at the reception desk even looked at me twice. Nobody’s standing guard here as far as I can tell. Go on in, elevators are on the left." A brief pause. "I'm on the sixth floor, heading to room 636 now. Hall's deserted, doors open with keycards. Ryan?"

"I'm good with those," Ryan answers as he and Michael cross the street and mingle with other pedestrians. "As long as I've got a similar sized card on me."

"Should be in your wallet," Michael says under his breath, recalling several cards in Dick Long's name in the wallet in his pocket right now.

"Right," says Ryan, fumbling around his pockets. "And I totally brought that with me–ah, here it is."

The hotel lobby is wide and spacious, small clusters of guests everywhere. There's a small lounge off to the right, the front desk spans the entirety of the back wall and also to the right is a double-wide open door that presumably leads to the dining hall and the outside world behind the building. Michael suspects pools and a fake beach. He doesn't think this hotel is built near one of the canals. Also the canals probably aren't meant for swimming in. Or are they? Now he kind of wants to find out if there's designated swimming canals.

Focus, Jones.

He and Ryan move toward the elevators, see that there's already a crowd gathering there, and decide to take the stairs as well. Michael's in pretty decent shape and Ryan is probably in better shape than he is, but they're both panting a little by the time they get up to the sixth floor. Gavin's loitering inconspicuously at the far end of the left hallway, pretending to be on his phone – all even numbers left, all odd numbers right – and looks at them and then behind them.

"Nobody followed us," Michael says in a low voice. "I'll stick around here and keep guard until you get the door open, okay?"

Gavin nods. "Yeah. No security cameras in the hallways, thankfully."

"How long do you need, Ryan?" Michael asks, positioning himself so he can see both the elevator doors and the door to the stairwell.

"Shouldn't be more than a few minutes," says Ryan, getting what looks like a credit card out of the wallet and casting glances at the keycard locks as he and Gavin move down the hallway to room 636. "Oh, these are easy."

"They're the cheap ones," says Gavin, leaning a shoulder against the wall as Ryan kneels in front of room 636. Michael can still hear them even though they're a few dozen yards away and talking in barely above a whisper. The sound just carries even with the carpeted floor. "I don't think many people will be in their rooms at this hour, but please be quiet, Ryan."

Even from here Michael can see the little smile Ryan directs at Gavin. "I still know how to do this, Gav," Ryan says and from the way Gavin's posture relaxes, Michael can tell Gavin's smiling back.

Just like Ryan said, it's only a little over a minute later that Michael hears a cracking noise and he turns his head just in time to see the door to room 636 swing open. He hurries over and slips inside, Gavin closing the door behind him.

"And the lock will even still work," Ryan says triumphantly, putting his credit card back in his wallet. "I'm glad I got to do that. Gotta keep those skills sharp."

The hotel looks like... well, a hotel room. Nobody's come in to clean yet, because the bed's unmade and the curtains are halfway drawn to closed, the sun spilling through the gap. One of the doors to the wardrobe is ajar and Gavin heads for it to rifle through it, but there's not much to check out because most of what Dan brought is still in a suitcase on the floor. Michael ducks into the bathroom and finds nothing of interest, just the regular shit you find in a bathroom and a dirty towel crumpled on the floor.

He comes back out just as Ryan bends at the waist to look at the safe in the back of the wardrobe. "Hey, Gav? You think Dan might've used this?"

"A shitty hotel room safe? Doubt it." Gavin's teeth worry at his bottom lip. "Crack it, though. Just to be sure."

"This is going to take a little longer than the door," says Ryan, cracking his knuckles. "I'm not sure if that's worrying or comforting."

"Eh, bit of both." Michael comes to stand behind him to watch him work. "Need some help?"

Ryan looks at him over his shoulder, shifting away from the safe. "You any good at this?"

Michael shrugs. "Sure. Give me a crowbar and some space." He grins. Fiddling with a dial? Not his style. He likes that Ryan genuinely considered it, though.

Ryan laughs softly and turns back to the safe. It's got an ordinary dial and looks pretty sturdy, considering it's just a small safe for a hotel room. "My way will take a little longer, but keep the safe in one piece."

It's cool watching Ryan work on the safe, his long fingers on the dial, his ear pressed to the metal and his eyes closed as he concentrates and listens. Michael kind of wants to stroke his cheek, but he keeps himself in check. Ryan's working.

Gavin's pacing the hotel room restlessly, biting on his fingernail, a bad habit Michael thought he ditched years ago.

Michael quietly moves over to him and draws his hand away from his mouth. "You quit doing that years ago," he says. "Don't start again."

"There's nothing here, Michael," Gavin starts, lowering his voice when Ryan glares at them from where he's crouched up against the safe. "Sorry." He breathes in deep and pushes the door to the small balcony open, stepping out into the sun and squinting, the lines next to his eyes deeper than before. "No clue as to why he's here and who's taken him. I don't know what I can do next, other than checking all the camera feeds I can hack into and hoping I win the lottery and see him somewhere among the hundreds of thousands of people who live here and the tourists who infest this place like damned ants."

"Gav," Michael starts, but Gavin cuts him off.

"Or I wait for him to call, hope they don't kill him right after, and step right into their waiting hands for... God knows what. Money? Death? Both?"

"You're not going to them," says Michael, stiffening.

"If it gets me to Dan, bloody hell I will," says Gavin and Michael feels his blood beginning to boil.

"We came here to _get Dan_ , not to hand you to whoever the fuck is behind this," Michael spits. "Like fuck will I let you go to... wherever the hell they want you to go."

"'Let me'?" Gavin repeats, his voice rising. "I can make my own damned decisions, Michael."

"So can I, and I didn't come all the way out to motherfucking _Italy_ so you can... so you can, what, knowingly walk into a trap?" Michael balls his hands into fists. "You want me and Ryan to just sit around and let you do that? Alone? That’s not why we came here. Whatever happens, _Gavin_ , we do it together."

"Wouldn't be the first time I'd find myself in a room full of bad guys alone, Michael," says Gavin and the indifference in his voice makes Michael want to grab him by the collar of his sweaty shirt and shake him. "Survived all of those, thank you."

"Yeah?" Michael asks, stepping closer, and reaching up to jab at the scar on Gavin's shoulder through the thin material of his shirt, the one behind his ear, the fading one on his arm. "You got fucked in all of those, remember? Nearly lost an eye that one time too. Don't be fucking stupid."

Gavin stares at him, then looks away. "What's a couple more scars?"

"It's not about the scars, idiot," Michael argues. "I don't give a shit whether you have fifteen scars or none. I give a shit about you talking about voluntarily giving yourself to a bunch of kidnappers."

"I have to get Dan!"

"We will get Dan! Just not that way!"

"How then?" Gavin presses his fists against his eyes and sucks in a ragged breath. "How then, Michael? Tell me how."

"I don't know." Michael throws up his hands. "We'll figure something out. We always do." He reaches out again and rests his hand on Gavin's shoulder, expecting it to get knocked away and is surprised when it isn't. He digs his fingers into Gavin's shoulder and then pulls him forward into a hug. He hasn't gotten the chance since they found out Dan missed his check-in and he misses Gavin's body heat against his skin, the way Gavin's taller body still fits pretty neatly against his own. Gavin buries his face in Michael's neck and tightly grips the back of his shirt, letting out a long, shuddering breath. "We'll figure something out," Michael repeats.

He kind of wishes Geoff and Jack and Jeremy were here. It wouldn't be a pretty sight, given how furious Geoff probably is with them, but they're smart and resourceful, and their strength has always been how well they work as a team and how they bounce ideas off each other to come up with solid plans.

"Got it!" Ryan calls from inside. "Come take a look at this."

Gavin mouths _thank you_ at Michael before he lets him go and hurries back inside, Michael hot on his feels.

"Whaddaya got?" Michael asks.

"Money," says Ryan. "A lot of it. At least I assume these pink ones with the big '500' on them are worth quite a bit."

"Jesus," says Gavin. "Yeah, that's about... six hundred dollars, I think?" He shrugs when he catches Michael and Ryan looking at him. "What? I'm English! We still use the pound!"

"Crazy Europeans have notes that are worth like six hundred bucks?" says Michael, plucking one from Ryan's fingers and flapping it about. "Christ."

"There's about... fifteen thousand euros here," Ryan says, thumbing through a stack of brightly colored paper. "I'd say it's payment for a job."

"He just left it here in a hotel room safe?" Michael asks, now picking up a bright green note. A hundred euros. It feels good in his hands. He could have a couple thousand more of these.

"Well, if he wasn't planning on leaving yet, where else could he put it? I sure wouldn't want to have that kind of cash on me. Besides, no one is gonna figure out there's thousands of dollars in a shitty hotel room safe. I think it'd actually be pretty secure here." Ryan hands Gavin the stack of money. "Should we keep this?"

Gavin doesn't answer, just stares at the money. "So he was here for a job. What kind of job? Why here? Whose job? This answers nothing."

"It's a bit more information," Ryan says and looks around. "And about all the information we're gonna get out of this room, I'd say."

"Let's do one last sweep," says Gavin, lifting up the mattress. His face is pinched. "I wanna be thorough."

Michael doesn't think they'll find anything, but if it helps Gavin, he'll search the room again. They do a pretty good job of checking all the places a guy could potentially hide shit, but they find nothing. Ryan ends up putting the cash back in the safe. It's way too much money to be lugging around, especially when they're also armed with guns and knives in awkward places. They're running out of awkward places to put things they didn't quite get the legal way.

Gavin kicks the tire of the rental when they get back to it and does a frustrated little lap around it before sagging against the hood and closing his eyes. “Nothing,” he says, and the defeat in his voice makes Michael ache. “Bugger all. Dammit, Dan…”

“Well, a little something,” says Ryan. “He definitely came here for a job.”

“Nothing that’ll actually help us, Ryan.” Gavin balls his fists and slams them against the car. “Dammit!”

“Doesn’t he usually tell you when he takes a job?” Michael asks, eyeballing the slight dent Gavin’s fist has left on the side of the car.

“Only when he thinks it’s dangerous,” says Gavin, dragging his hands through his hair and then down his face. “Christ, I… I just don’t know what to do next.”

To the house is what’s next and Gavin is quiet on the trip back. His face is impassive as he stares out the window at the rapidly darkening sky. Michael doesn’t like it, doesn’t like how Gavin’s harder to read now, how he’s not showing his every damn thought on his face as usual. He looks over at Ryan, catches him giving Gavin a look via the rearview mirror too, and the two of them exchange worried looks. Michael’s glad he’s not the only one a little unsettled.

It’s near dark when they make it back to their safehouse. Safemansion. Michael has real trouble calling it a house. Some lights have automatically come on and they slowly trudge inside, yawning, by unspoken agreement making their way to the kitchen because that’s where they were that afternoon and that’s where a bunch of Gavin’s equipment is still set up amidst a sea of extension cords and power banks.

“We should get some sleep,” Ryan suggests quietly after they’ve had a quick bite to eat and Michael’s indulged himself and cleared away the dirty dishes and cutlery, trying to stave off the exhaustion settling deep in his bones.  

Gavin waves a hand. “You go up, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Yeah?” Michael says. “You’ll actually get some sleep? You won’t just stare at a monitor the whole night and fuck yourself so you’ll be useless in the morning?”

Gavin glares at him. “I got the point earlier, Michael. I’ll get some sleep. Just let me check a couple of things right quick and I’ll join you.”

Ryan slides an arm around his waist as they make their way upstairs to one of the massive bedrooms where they’ve dumped what little luggage they brought. “Just give him a minute, Michael. He doesn’t deal well with not knowing what our next move should be and he’s worried about Dan.”

“I know.” Michael sighs. “It sucks, but I just don’t see what our next move _can_ be. He’s right. We got fuck-all to go on now. All we really can do is wait for the next call.”

Ryan presses his fingers against the crease on his brow. “Which is a fucking terrible idea for so many reasons.”

“Yeah,” says Michael, flopping down onto the bed and kicking off his shoes. It’s smaller than the one they share at Gavin’s place, but they’ll make do. “We’re kind of wasting the short head start we had. Fuck.” He glares at the ceiling and rubs at his eyes. Take out contact, he reminds himself.

“It’s not been a great success,” Ryan agrees, pulling his shirt off over his head and tugging at the band keeping his hair back. “Though I wouldn’t call it ‘wasting’. More like ‘failing’.”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better, Ryan.” Michael looks up when Gavin practically slouches into the room. “Hey, Gav. You wanna hit the bathroom first?”

“There’s like eight of them, Michael,” Gavin says and yawns. “But I do have to piss.”

It’s not until Michael’s crawled under the covers that he realizes just how fucking tired he is. It’s like all his muscles melt the second his head hits the pillows and he groans loudly, opening his eyes when he hears Ryan chuckling at him around his toothbrush. “Just wait til you lie down,” he grumbles, punctuating his words with a huge yawn.

Gavin’s the last to climb into bed, settling on Michael’s other side with a tired sigh.

“I’ll set the alarm for six,” Ryan says, “get an early start tomorrow.”

To do what, Michael doesn’t know, and he decides not to ask while Gavin is on his way to actually fall asleep. Sleeping on the plane is all well and good, but it doesn’t beat sleeping in a real, comfortable bed in a dark room.

He wakes up once when Gav gets up in the middle of the night.

“Bathroom,” Gavin mutters and Michael briefly feels the press of his palm against his cheek, “sorry, boi. Go back to sleep.”

‘Again?’ Michael thinks and then he falls back asleep.

Ryan’s six am alarm is an angry buzzing and it takes Michael a minute to orient himself. The windows are on the wrong side and the light is all wrong too. Ryan’s swearing under his breath and Gavin… Gavin is apparently already up. His side of the bed is cool. Must have not been able to sleep.

Michael sighs as he swings his legs over the side of the bed. “What are the odds Gav made us breakfast?”

“Startlingly low,” says Ryan.

The thing is, Michael and Ryan both don’t even realize something’s wrong when they make their way to the kitchen and find it empty. Michael feels something crawl down his spine when he checks the living room and doesn’t find Gavin either. But it’s not until they’re standing in the backyard looking at the empty garden table at the pool that they realize he’s gone. They do a quick check of the rest of the house, but they know it’s futile.

He’s not there.

“No fucking way,” Michael says in a low voice and his nails dig into his palms so hard they draw blood. “He did not fucking do this.”

“Jesus, where’d he go?”

“He talked about it yesterday,” Michael snarls. “About giving himself to them when they called.”

“What?” says Ryan, turning a disbelieving gaze on him. “But they didn’t call.”

“As far as we know.” Michael stomps back inside and yanks at the nearest laptop. He flips open the lid and there’s a little note on the keyboard. Michael closes his eyes for a second and then picks it up.

‘ _I traced Dan’s call_ ,’ it says, in Gavin’s handwriting. ‘ _I’m going to get him back. I don’t want either of you to get hurt. Please don’t be mad. I need to do this. I love you both and I will be back - with Dan! Gav._ ’

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Michael says, crumpling up the note and throwing it across the kitchen. It bounces against a cabinet and lands at the foot of the stove. “I’m gonna put my hands around his neck and wring it until he stops breathing.”

“Michael,” says Ryan and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Deep breaths, Michael.”

“Fuck that!” Michael rounds on him and raises a balled fist in his direction. “He’s fucking dead. I told him not to do go to them, he said he wouldn’t do it and he did.”

“He traced Dan’s call? He said he couldn’t do it.”

“Well, Ryan, he lied.” Michael throws up his arms. “Turns out he lied about a whole bunch of stuff. Goddammit, Gavin!” He wants to punch the laptop clean off the kitchen table, but they might actually need the thing and God even knows what’s on there that’s important.

He takes a couple of slow, deep breaths and tries to ignore the fan-fucking-tastic pounding headache he feels coming on. What a time for Gav to play the fucking hero. Doesn’t want either of them to get hurt. Gavin’s going to be the one that gets hurt -- Michael’s gonna make sure of _that_.

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan mutters under his breath. “That fucking idiot.” He squeezes his eyes shut and reaches out to grab Michael’s shoulder. “All right. All right, we can deal with this. All we gotta do is find him before he gets in way over his head. Guys capable of grabbing Dan off the street aren’t going to be your run of the mill drug runners or purse snatchers. God…”

“Find him?” Michael repeats. “How the fuck are we going to fucking find him, Ryan?”

“I don’t know!” Ryan yells. His fingers dig into Michael’s shoulder. “Check the damn laptop, maybe there’s something on there that’ll lead us to--”

He’s interrupted by a loud, shrill whine and they look at each other in bafflement until Michael realizes it’s gotta be an alarm of some kind. Gavin must have reset it when he left.

“Uh,” Michael says, looking around wildly. “That’s the… gate alarm?”

“Think so,” says Ryan, striding out of the kitchen toward the little office just off the main hall that serves as a security station. “Somebody’s here.” He gets out a pistol and Michael does the same and together they stand in front of the wall of monitors showing the camera angles from all around the mansion. The three different monitors for the gate cameras are on the left.

Michael sucks in a huge breath. “Well,” he says, distantly noting his voice is shaking a little. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

There’s a rental car parked in front of the gate. Three people have gotten out and one of them is yanking futilely on the bars of the gate, visibly shouting something. It’s Geoff. Behind him, Jack’s leaning back against the car, arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head. Jeremy is glancing around and looks directly into one of the cameras he finds, giving it a little wave.

“We should probably let them in,” says Michael, blowing out a breath.

This is not going to be pretty.

*

Ryan’s got his inscrutable face on while Michael figures out how to open the gate from inside the security office and Geoff, Jack and Jeremy make their way toward the mansion. How’d they even find them here?

“You ready for this?” he asks.

Ryan glances over at him, one eyebrow raised. “Are you?”

“Whatever, I’m giving them five minutes and then I’m heading out to find Gav.” Michael shrugs. “Don’t care whether they’ll help me or not.”

“I’m with you,” says Ryan and the coolness in his blue eyes makes way for the warmth Michael’s been seeing a lot lately. It makes a knot inside him unravel and he can’t help but smile back at him.

Together, they move out onto the porch and Michael shields his face against the sun with his hand as he watches the rental car move up the long-ass driveway. His heart is beating hard in his chest. He stands behind the decision he made two days ago -- God, has it only been two days? Feels like a month -- but he can’t deny he’s a little bit nervous about Geoff. He’s not gonna let it show, though.

“Don’t you worry about it, Geoff,” are Geoff’s first words when he gets out of the car and stalks toward them, “we’ll get him back, Geoff. We won’t fuck up weeks’ worth of work to fly to fucking Italy, Geoff!”

“We’re here on a _rescue mission_ ,” Ryan snaps.

“You could have asked me for help!” Geoff storms up the stairs of the porch and gets into Ryan’s face, putting them almost nose to nose. He has to look up slightly, but that doesn’t deter him in the least, and Michael admits to himself he would’ve taken a couple of steps back. “Instead you just fucking left the goddamn country. Without telling me. Without telling anyone. You ran off and let us figure out for ourselves that you were gone. In the middle of a goddamn heist!”

Ryan doesn’t give an inch, just stares back, his face cold. “You were insistent we drag Gavin back to the base. ‘Tie him up if you have to’ I believe were your words.”

The two of them glare at each other and neither of them moves back or looks away. Jesus. Michael’s not sure who’d win that fight if it came down to it. Ryan’s Ryan, but Geoff didn’t get to where he is without having left a trail of bodies in his wake.

“All right,” says Jack, stepping between Ryan and Geoff and gently, but firmly pushing them apart, “let’s not murder each other just yet. That’s not why we’re here. Right, Geoff?”

“I maybe changed my mind,” says Geoff, his voice steely and his eyes unwaveringly on Ryan.

Jack sighs, exasperated. “No, you didn’t.”

“We did what we had to do,” Michael says and now Geoff tears his eyes away from Ryan to give Michael a narrow-eyed onceover Michael doesn’t care for at all. He shivers despite the heat, but he straightens up a little and meets Geoff’s eyes. “I don’t regret it.”

“Where’s Gav?” Jeremy pipes up.

“Yeah,” says Geoff, “where is that little asshole?”

“Gone,” says Michael.

“What do you mean, ‘gone’? Gone where?” Jeremy looks around like he’s expecting Gavin to jump out from behind the flower bed any second now.

“He traced Dan’s call and went off to go get him,” Michael says, feeling his palms grow sweaty and warm again at the thought of Gavin out there, alone.

“What call?” Jack asks. “He called?”

Right, they didn’t know that yet.

“When we were still at home,” he says, avoiding Geoff’s gaze now. “That’s when we knew he had been kidnapped. Whoever grabbed him wants Gavin too.”

“Do you know who it is?” Jack asks, now fully shifted into investigative mode. “Any leads?”

“Not really.” Michael shakes his head.

“We went to Dan’s hotel room here in Carienza yesterday,” Ryan adds. “Found a pile of money in the safe leading us to believe he was here for a job of some kind, but nothing else that could help us. We came back here, went to bed, woke up this morning to find Gavin gone. He left a note saying he was gonna get Dan. We were just about to head out to try and find him.”

“I can help with that,” Jeremy immediately offers and he pulls out a phone. “Assuming he’s still wearing his watch, that is.”

“His watch,” Michael repeats and then smacks his forehead. “Goddammit, I am so fucking stupid. Ryan.” He elbows him. “That stupid fucking fancy-ass watch he wears. It’s got GPS.”

“That’s how we found you in the first place,” says Jeremy, tapping on his screen. “Led us directly here but I stopped tracking when we got the address. Wish I hadn’t, now,” he adds. “We would’ve seen him leave the house. Also, what is this place?” He cranes his neck, looks up at the balcony and the bright red roof.

“A safehouse, believe it or not,” says Michael and he can actually smile again. They can trace Gav. They can find him. Then he can kick Gavin’s ass. It’s all gonna work out.

Jack whistles low between her teeth and backs up a couple of steps to take in the whole picture. “This is a safehouse? Damn. I mean, _damn_.”

“Trust me, we had a hard time believing it too,” says Ryan. “We’ll give you the tour after we get Gavin back.” He glances at Geoff, who’s leaning on the porch rail. “We can count on your help, right?”

“Fuck you,” says Geoff, giving him the finger, “of course you can count on our help. But when we find him, I’m gonna kill him.”

“Get in line,” says Michael. “I get dibs.”

Geoff works his jaw. “Yeah? What’d he do to you?”

“Lied to me.”

“Not fun when people do that to you, huh?” says Geoff, stabbing a finger in his direction.

“Can we focus?” Jack says, before Michael can respond. “We can save all the bickering and shouting and murdering for after we do this, okay? Right now, we have bigger things to worry about. How long has he been gone?”

“I don’t know.” Ryan scratches at the beginning of his beard on his chin. “Couple of hours.”

“He woke me up when he left,” says Michael. “Said he was going to the bathroom. I didn’t look at the time, but it felt like I’d been asleep maybe four, five hours? Middle of the night.”

“Got him,” Jeremy says and he puts his phone flat on his palm and holds it out so everyone can crowd around it. “Looks like he’s on the edge of town, almost fifteen miles from here.” There is a little yellow blip on the eastern side of Carienza, near the waterline. “It’s not moving… I don’t know what that means.”

Means he could be dead. Or just captured. Or currently busy murdering everyone there. Could mean a lot of things.

“Let’s go.” Ryan claps his hands together. “No time to waste.”

“We don’t have any weapons,” says Jeremy. “We came in on a cargo flight, but they wouldn’t let us bring anything actually useful and we haven’t had time to figure out how to get them here.”

That explains that, then, Michael thinks. He’s pretty sure none of the others have passports either and they wouldn’t have had access to Gavin’s place and the safe.

“We got you covered there,” says Ryan. “Follow me.”

“Holy shit,” says Geoff after Ryan and Michael introduce the others to the arms room. “You have got to be kidding me. This is unbelievable. How…? Why…? Who…?”

“That’s pretty much what we said,” says Ryan, moving over to the far wall to pick up a shotgun and an SMG. “Ammo over there in those drawers, grenades in that box. This place has got everything.”

“Hey.” Jeremy gives Michael a little nudge when the two of them drift toward the C4 and detonators mounted on the wall opposite the door. “You hanging in there? Doing okay?”

“Yeah,” says Michael, “yeah, I’m okay. Just… worried, you know.” He cuts a quick little glance at Geoff, standing alone near a rack of heavy pistols while Ryan and Jack ransack a couple of ammo drawers. “He’s pretty pissed, huh?”

“Yeah,” says Jeremy, “he ain’t happy. But, you know, he’ll get over it. He just really got caught up in the casino shit and his whole… thing with Delacroix. It took some talking, but eventually Jack and I convinced him we needed to be here with you guys, for Dan, because we didn’t think him missing a check-in was a good thing, you know? He wasn’t gonna be… it wasn’t gonna be a thing where he got drunk at a club and forgot to do this one huge important thing he’d never forgotten before. It was going to be bad. So we wanted to go to Italy too.”

“You don’t even know him,” says Michael.

“Am I your friend, Michael?” Jeremy asks, looking up at him with serious dark eyes.

“Yes,” Michael says immediately. What a stupid fucking question.

“I am,” Jeremy confirms. “And you’re my friend and so is Gavin and I think I’m getting there with Ryan, but he’s a little harder to get to know, you know? So when one of my friends is in trouble, or a friend of a friend needs help, I’m there, right? Like they would be for me.”

Well. Now Michael kind of feels like shit. “I would be there for you, Lil’ J,” he says earnestly.

“I wanted to be there for Gav,” Jeremy continues, ignoring him, “but you’d already left by the time we realized you weren’t coming back to base. So… that kind of sucked.”

Michael closes his eyes and lets his forehead drop against the wall. Ow. It hurts, but he feels he deserves it. “I’m sorry,” he says feebly. “We were just… in a rush, you know? Dan called, we figured out he’d been grabbed, Gav booked us a couple of flights and all we could think about was leaving before Geoff sent anyone else to drag all of us back to the base.” He lets out a deep sigh and looks at Jeremy. “I’m really sorry.”

“My point is,” says Jeremy, “Geoff’s not the only one who’s mad.” He nods at Jack and Ryan. “Jack’s pissed too so you’ll also be hearing from her when this mess is all over and done with.”

Michael winces. “We may not have thought things all the way through.”

Jeremy grabs a bunch of shit and starts stuffing it in his pockets. “No, you didn’t.”

“Let’s go!” Ryan calls, heading out, Jack hot on his heels, Geoff trudging after them at a slower pace, hands stuffed in his pocket, rifle strapped to his chest. His head is bent and he’s staring hard at the floor.

Michael watches him go and turns back to Jeremy.

“But,” Jeremy goes on, “I get why you did what you did. Geoff did come down hard on not wanting Gavin to leave and he did spend a lot of time yelling at us about it and how you were fucking the casino heist. So I’ll get over it, too.” He holds out a closed fist for a fistbump. “We’re good, okay?”

“Okay,” says Michael, lightheaded with relief, knocking his knuckles against Jeremy’s. “Thanks, Jeremy.”

“Next time, though…”

“I’ll call you,” Michael promises.

They meet the others out front on the porch and Ryan hands out the earpieces he’d thought to bring along. Two cars, it’s decided on, with Jeremy joining Ryan and Michael in the first one and Jack and Geoff tailing them in the second. When they find Gav and Dan, one car is not going to fit them all.

Michael’s secretly happy he’s not sharing a car with Geoff and he can tell Ryan feels the same way, judging from the half wary, half relieved look Ryan slants the second car.

“So on a scale of one to ten,” Ryan starts after they’ve hit one of the bigger roads and are heading east, “how angry is Geoff?”

“Uh, about a seven right now,” Jeremy answers, his eyes glued to his phone. “But he was a ten when we realized you guys had skipped town, so progress, right? Take a left at the next intersection.”

“So he’s not gonna shoot Gavin on sight?”

“Probably not, but I wouldn’t put money on it. Follow this road for a couple of miles, then left at the fork. I’ll let you know when we get there.”

Ryan meets Michael’s eyes via the rearview mirror as he accelerates and neatly switches lanes, squishing the rental between two scooters.

‘ _It’s gonna be okay_ ,’ Michael mouths at him and the tense lines of Ryan’s shoulders slump a little. Good.

Most of the drive is done in silence. Michael looks back a couple of times only to see Jack and Geoff arguing in the car behind them; Geoff with his hands flailing about, Jack with a lot of emphatic gesturing and pointing, at Geoff, at the car Michael’s in. They don’t even realize he’s watching and it’s a good thing Jack’s a great driver because it doesn’t look like she’s paying all that much attention at the way she’s driving -- in a foreign country, no less.

“We’re getting close,” Jeremy says after a little while. “Slow down a bit, Ryan, I think… Yeah, he’s… he’s at the harbor? Looks like he’s somewhere in the cargo area.” He taps on his phone and stares at the screen intently. “Yeah, the blip’s somewhere around here, where all the containers are.”

“What, shipping containers?” says Michael, leaning forward between the two seats to take a look at Jeremy’s phone. The yellow blip is close now, still not moving, and Jeremy switches apps to show him a satellite image of the harbor. The blip’s somewhere in a sea of shipping containers. “Shit. That’s not great. There’s gotta be thousands of them. Fucking hell.”

“It’s not good,” Ryan agrees, turning in his seat and waving at the car behind them to slow down. “But it looks like security’s not too tight around here.”

Not too tight basically means non-existent. The entrance to the harbor is guarded by a barrier and a small guard post, but the barrier’s all the way up and the guard post is empty. It’d be conspicuous under any other circumstances, but as it is, the three of them exchange looks and Ryan shrugs and just drives on in, heading toward the blip until there’s not enough room anymore for the car to push ahead. There’s a couple of armed guards patrolling, but none of them even give them a second look, probably owing to the fact there’s more cars making their way into the container sea.

Ryan leads Jack and Geoff’s car into a cluster of massive green containers, where he stashes their car parked tightly up against one of them.

“That was easy,” says Michael, climbing out of the car. “Back in Los Santos we’d have had to jump that barrier at the very least.”

“Act like you belong,” says Ryan. “I guess we pulled that one off real good.”

They gather around the trunk of the car and sort out their weapons. Michael gets his SMG again and a handgun, and grabs a couple chunks of C4 and blasting caps as well as a few grenades. Just in case. It’s awkward trying to figure out where to stick everything in the few clothes he’s wearing (the temperature is already rocketing up and it’s not even 7am), but he manages it.

Geoff is grumpily glaring around, swearing when he bangs his arm against the container wall. “Of course that little shit had to go and get lost or caught or whatever in the worst place to navigate in the world. This is a goddamn maze.”

“We’ll find him,” Jeremy says evenly. “This tracker is pretty accurate. I doubt we’ll have to dig through a lot of containers.”

“All right,” says Jack, strapping a shotgun to her chest and tucking pistols in her jeans, “let’s just be careful. We don’t know exactly where he is and we don’t know if he’s captured or not. His dot hasn’t moved?”

“No,” says Jeremy. “Could mean he’s caught.”

“Could mean he’s holding out somewhere,” Ryan points out.

“Could also mean he lost his watch,” says Michael, though he hates that particular option.

“Fuck,” says Geoff. “Let’s just find the fucker.” He stomps off and Jack sighs heavily and falls into step next to him, elbowing him none too gently. Jack might be pissed, but she’ll set that aside and focus on the job. Michael can only hope she can get Geoff to do the same. “Come on, assholes!” Geoff yells. “Jeremy, where to?”

Jeremy hurries to catch up with them and Ryan and Michael bring up the rear, guns at the ready.

Geoff isn’t wrong, though, it really is like a maze. A very bright, corrugated and tall maze, with the containers stacked up as high as five or six at times. Only once do they have to stop and duck away from patrolling guards -- they might not care about cars, but they’ll definitely care about obviously foreign armed guys. It’s a long-ass walk to where Gavin’s blip is hanging out. Michael’s shirt starts sticking to his back, his palm gets hot and slippery around the handle of his SMG.

“He’s fine,” Ryan says, leaning in close to him, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.

“He’s got nine lives,” Michael mutters. “Eight when I’m done with him.”

That actually makes Ryan chuckle and the sound eases some of Michael’s tension.

“Aren’t you angry?” Michael asks, catching Ryan’s wrist. “Aren’t you fucking pissed off at him?”

“Yeah, Michael, I fucking am,” says Ryan, giving him a quick look. “There’s just no point in getting all worked up about it now. Believe me, there’s gonna be a lot of yelling after we get him back.”

“Good,” says Michael. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

After what feels like hours and hours of walking but is in reality only maybe ten minutes, they stumble across the first sign something in the container maze isn’t right.

It’s a dead body.

A man, dressed in ratty shorts and an all-fitting t-shirt. He’s curled up against a rusted brown container and he appears to have been stabbed several times. A blood trail leads from a couple of feet away to where the body is now, like someone had stabbed and killed him, then dragged him over in a pretty half-assed attempt to hide him.

“Jesus,” says Geoff and he leans down over the corpse and wrinkles his nose. “He’s gonna smell real bad in a couple of hours.”

“He already smells bad,” says Michael, taking a step back when a particularly nasty waft reaches his nostrils.

“He’s been dead for a couple of hours at least,” Jack says, squatting down and taking as close a look as possible without touching him. “He was also shot, see?” She points to what looks like an entrance wound in the middle of his chest. “Probably shot first, then stabbed to finish off the job.”

“Gavin,” says Michael and Jack nods.

“Maybe,” Jack allows and straightens up. “Jeremy, how close are we?”

“Close enough that we should start worrying about being heard,” says Jeremy. “It’s hard to get a decent idea of scale from this tracking app… Maybe half a mile out?”

“All right, all you chucklefucks shut the hell up unless you really need to talk,” says Geoff. “Be as quiet as you can, guns out, watch your backs.”

They move in dead silence for another couple of minutes, weaving their way between containers with Jeremy leading them closer and closer to that yellow blip. Michael can feel his heart start beating faster the closer they come and it’s probably because he feels so tense that he nearly yells when they come face to face with a very surprised, very armed young woman.

She’s as shocked as they are, but she’s slower, and the second she raises her shotgun up, a dagger embeds itself in her throat with uncanny accuracy. She lets out a gurgled, muffled noise and collapses, her hands scrambling desperately at the blood-soaked handle of the dagger.

Ryan moves closer to her, bends low and grabs the handle, giving the dagger a quick twist before pulling it out and watching her die. “One more down,” he mumbles, wiping the dagger on his blue pants, leaving blood smears that almost look artistic. He picks up her shotgun and fumbles for extra shells on the body, which he pockets.

“We gotta be close,” Geoff says in a hushed whisper. “Does she have a phone or earpiece on her?”

“Phone,” Ryan says, holding it up. “Locked, though. No earpiece, no ID.”

She’s clearly not customs or harbor security or anything like that, dressed in casual shorts and a white shirt, slowly staining red.

“Let’s keep moving before someone goes looking for her,” Jack says.

“Turn the sound off on that,” Michael says before Ryan stuffs the woman’s phone in his pocket.

“Good thinking.” Ryan switches the sound off and falls into step next to Michael as they carefully, quietly proceed to move through more narrow corridors flanked by high containers. The heat has nowhere to go in the maze and Michael feels the sweat running down his back. Christ, what he wouldn’t give for an ice cold coke right about now.

“Shoulda brought water,” he mutters and Ryan nods.

They’re on high alert now, expecting more armed assholes to come spilling out now that they’re getting closer to… whatever’s going. Whoever is behind all of this.

Jeremy, up front, stops moving and turns around. He doesn’t say anything, just mimics with elaborate hand gestures that he’s gonna scout ahead – alone – to see what’s up. Michael and Jack move back a little, trying to keep an eye on where they just came from.

Jeremy returns less than a minute later and they huddle together closely.

“I think I found him,” Jeremy starts and Michael’s heart jumps into his throat. “There’s an open container a few… containers… blocks… whatever… from here. There’s two dudes out front, they’ve both got assault rifles, and probably more dudes inside. I can’t see what they’re doing in there, but there were noises that I could hear.”

“Good noises or bad noises?” Ryan asks and Michael glances over to see that muscle in his jaw twitch.

“Just noises, Ryan. People talking, maybe. Gavin’s blip is right there.”

“Can we take out the two guys out front?” Michael asks.

Jack shakes her head. “Not without making a lot of noise.”

“If we shoot them both at the same time, someone’s gonna come looking,” says Geoff. “Plus, bullets are gonna make a hell of a lot of noise in this metal echo chamber, even with silencers. If there’s security around, they’re gonna come running.”

Good point.

“It’s a risk,” says Michael. “But we gotta take it. Besides, I’ve barely seen any security and let’s be real, they didn’t look like much. We can take ‘em.”

“But can we take them without Gavin catching a bullet?” Jeremy asks. “Or Dan, assuming he’s there also.” And still alive, is what Jeremy doesn’t add.

“We have the element of surprise,” Jack says. “This also isn’t the first time we’re doing a rescue mission, Gavin knows what to do when he hears and sees us coming in.”

“We can’t just sit here and do nothing,” says Michael and he deliberately clicks the safety off. “We go in, hard and fast.” He looks around his crew and meets their eyes one by one, even Geoff’s. Geoff, whose eyes are usually kind and sleepy when they’re on Michael, is now still kind of glaring at him. Michael can’t worry about that now. “We all on the same page?”

“Yeah,” says Geoff, looking away first. “I get first dibs on kicking Gavin’s ass, though.”

“Fuck no,” says Michael. “You can get in line behind me and Ryan.”

“We can discuss the procedure for kicking Gavin’s ass later,” Jack cuts in. “Let’s not wait any longer. Jeremy, what’s the best way to approach the container they’re in?”

“There’s two paths that I could see,” says Jeremy and he thumbs behind himself. “The guys out front are both facing a path each; I’m real damn lucky the guy watching the path I picked didn’t see me. We should just split up and take them out at the same time and then rush the container.”

Michael doublechecks his earpiece and he and Ryan make their way over to where Jeremy’s telling them to go. It’s not long before they quietly and carefully approach the container the blip is coming from and Michael gets his first look at the guys out front. Both big, muscular, assault rifles strapped to their chests, sunglasses blocking their eyes. They’re guarding a tall, dark red container. One of its door is half open and Michael can hear noises coming from the inside. He strains to hear what’s happening, but Jeremy’s right, it’s hard to tell. Nobody’s screaming, at least. Michael’s gonna count that as a plus.

“In position,” Ryan murmurs next to him.

“We are too,” says Jack. “I’ve got eyes on the target.”

Ryan raises his gun. “Me too.”

“Take them out,” says Geoff.

Jack fires. Her guy goes down with a loud cry followed by sudden silence.

Ryan’s gun fucking _jams_. His eyes widen and a wild, angry ‘ _fuck’_ falls from his mouth, and Michael sees it all happening like it’s in goddamn slow motion, like those videos Gavin watches all the time. The guy, their target, watches his buddy go down and he swings his gun around because he hears Ryan swear and Michael drives his shoulder into Ryan’s and knocks him down, firing his own gun blindly at their target.

His bullet hits the guy in the stomach and the guy’s bullet rips its way through Michael’s shoulder. Jack is screaming in his ear, Ryan stares up at him for half a second before he yanks Michael’s gun from his hand and fires it once, twice, three-four-five times – it’s a little much, to be honest – and Michael… Michael’s vision goes white and he bites his lip til it bleeds so he won’t scream and swear and otherwise go fucking _nuts_ , and rolls off Ryan, clutching his brand new bullet wound.

“Michael!” Ryan’s very close to shouting and he hovers over Michael, hands flailing wildly before settling on Michael’s chest and Michael’s hand, the one over his gunshot wound. “He’s been shot, shoulder wound, god-fucking-dammit–”

“Get me up,” Michael says, gritting out the words through the blinding pain. “Help me the fuck up, Ryan, I can’t just lie here, we need to move.”

Ryan looks like he wants to protest, but there’s shouting on the comms and when Michael turns his head, he can just see Geoff, Jack and Jeremy coming their way, completely ignoring the far more important container.

“Up, Haywood!” Michael snarls, clutching a handful of Ryan’s shirt with his free hand. “My legs still work, I can still use a gun and Gavin is in there!”

“Why’d you do that?” Ryan demands as he slides an arm under Michael’s back and helps him up to his feet, fumbling his gun back into Michael’s left hand.

Michael sways, squeezes his eyes shut. His shoulder is bleeding freely and throbbing like crazy and he fights down the waves of nausea rolling over him. “Bullet go through?” he asks, blinking rapidly and shaking his head to clear the fog. His breath is coming out in short, sharp pants and he hates it. He got fucking _shot_. Fuck.

“Through and through,” Ryan confirms, looking behind Michael for the bullet. “That one was meant for me, Michael.” His voice is pitched high with disbelief and he’s staring at Michael like Michael’s just grown a second head.

“Yeah, well,” says Michael and he starts moving toward the container, waving off Jack when she sprints to his other side. “I’m not losing you, Ryan. Now let’s go, I’m good, we gotta go in, come on!” He wipes the blood from his mouth and jams his fist over the bullet wound again, pressing down hard. The pain is so fucking excruciating he feels light-headed, but he tries to shake it off and together, they stumble toward the container.

Someone comes rushing out and Jeremy puts a bullet between his eyes, not even breaking his stride. Another guy is hot on the first guy’s heels, but he realizes just in time it’s pretty fucking dangerous outside the container, so he half stumbles, half runs back inside, screaming, “Marco! _Marco_!” followed by a string of angry Italian Michael doesn’t understand even a little bit.

Jack’s in first, Jeremy right next to her, with Ryan all but dragging Michael along and Geoff bringing up the rear.

The container is cramped but surprisingly brightly lit, with floodlights mounted high up against the walls. Clearly this container isn’t used for shipping anything; rather, it’s being used as a goddamn fucking office of some kind, Michael sees. There’s even a desk pushed against the side wall, with several open laptops resting on it.

Against the far wall, in the center, is Gavin. He’s down on his knees, his arms behind his back, and his eyes are wide and frantic because behind him, there’s a tall, dark-haired guy jamming a pistol into the back of his head. He’s got a hand fisted in Gavin’s hair, holding him in place, and his eyes are flitting around the five of them with something very close to panic though he’s trying hard not to let it show. Gavin’s bleeding from several cuts in his face, some of them deep and ugly, his shirt is torn apart and he’s only wearing one shoe. There’s dried blood caked in his hair. He’s a goddamn mess. He’s the most beautiful thing Michael’s ever seen.

On the floor in the corner is an unmoving shape and standing in front of it is the guy that had run back into the container yelling ‘ _Marco, Marco_!’ He’s got a hold of a shotgun and he looks eager to be using it, a certain rough calmness on his features. Guy’s got experience killing people. Michael can tell.

“Michael,” Gavin croaks, looking at Michael’s shoulder.

“Do be quiet,” the guy with the gun to his head snaps. “Stefano!”

He’s got an accent, but not the Italian accent Michael expected. No, this guy has an English accent. He sounds like _Gavin_.

“All right,” says Geoff, raising his gun. “Playtime’s over. Five against two, drop your motherfucking guns.”

Shotgun guy – Stefano? – racks his shotgun and raises it up, steadying it on the center of Geoff’s chest. They’re about ten feet apart. If he fires, Geoff will end up in a million little parts. “No,” he says, clipped, and he does speak English with an Italian accent. “We have a hostage. Marco will kill your little friend if you do not put down your guns.”

“Not happening,” says Ryan firmly and his grip tightens around Michael’s waist as he raises Michael's gun. “You took Gavin, you’re gonna die no matter what you do.”

Michael imagines Marco looks a little bit taken aback. “If you drop your gun and let Gavin go, we’ll make it fast,” he adds. “Otherwise… let’s just say we’re pretty creative people and that Ryan here knows how to handle a knife. And I’m a pretty fast learner.”

Marco sneers. “You Americans, always so vulgar.”

“Oh, you haven’t even begun to hear us being vulgar,” says Jeremy. “Let Gavin go. Now.”

“That’s adorable,” says Marco, his eyes landing on Jeremy. “How old are you? Does your mummy know you’re here? Regardless, I don’t believe I shall be doing that.” He clicks the safety off and presses his gun harder into Gavin’s head, sliding it from the back of his head to angle it at his cheek. “Really, Free, you have actual friends now? I didn’t think you were capable of inspiring such loyalty. You and Gruchy always lived in your own little world, impenetrable to outsiders.”

“Kill him,” says Gavin, trying to twist out of Marco’s grasp. “I want him dead. Dan–ah!”

“Where is Dan?” Michael demands, trying to stay as still as possible so as to not jostle his shoulder.

“Corner,” says Gavin and cries out when Marco pistol whips him across the face and then yanks his head back and shoves the barrel of the gun into his mouth. Panicked noises spill from him now and Michael starts forward, vision clouding red with fury, because fucking nobody gets to do that to Gavin and live. Ryan and Geoff both haul him back, Ryan a little more gently because he’s on Michael’s injured side.

“Alive?” Jack asks tersely and Gavin manages a tiny nod.

“Enough talking,” says Stefano and he takes a step closer to them. “I shoot.”

Jeremy takes aim. “You wanna die right now? Because I can do that.”

“Stefano,” Marco says. “We are leaving.”

Michael lets out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re not going anywhere, asshole.”

Marco arches a perfectly plucked eyebrow at him. If Michael didn’t already hate the guy, he’d hate him just for that. “I do believe Stefano has made an excellent point. We have a hostage.” He pushes the gun further into Gavin’s mouth to make his point and Michael helplessly watches Gavin tense up so hard it’s gotta hurt. “We are leaving, with him, and you sorry lot are going to wait here until we’ve gone.”

“Hell no,” says Geoff, stepping closer, free hand balling into a fist like he’s about to start punching.

“Don’t think I will not kill him,” says Marco and Michael sees his finger tighten on the trigger. “Given what he’s done to me and what he’s been refusing to do in order to compensate me for my troubles, he’s lucky he’s not dead already. But if I can’t have what I want, I’ll settle for turning him into a corpse. Up you go,” he says to Gavin and fucking _finally_ slides the gun out of his mouth, putting it to Gavin’s neck instead.

Gavin’s breathing fast and he’s stumbling as Marco and Stefano haul him up to his feet, like his knees don’t quite want to cooperate. “Kill him,” he says again, recklessly, uncaring of the gun jammed into his neck. “Your shoulder, Michael–” His words come out slurred and there’s blood on his lips and teeth, sliding down his chin. Fuck. Michael’s going to kill Marco _slowly_.

“I’m fine, Gav,” says Michael, blood still seeping through his fingers, staining everything red. He feels fuzzy-headed, actually, and he’s fairly certain the only thing holding him up is Ryan’s solid form next to him, but Gavin doesn’t need to hear that right now.

“Move,” says Marco and he grabs Gavin’s shoulder with his free hand and nudges him forward. “Step aside, boys, or your… ah, friend? Is that what he is to you? Remarkable. At any rate, if you don’t move, he will die and you will all be a witness to it.”

“You hurt him and your death will be excruciating and slow,” Ryan snarls.

“Are you not paying attention?” Marco scoffs as he, Stefano and Gavin slowly edge toward the container door. “I’ve already hurt him. Quite a bit, actually, but he can take a beating rather well, surprisingly enough.”

They’re passing Michael so closely he can almost feel them and Gavin’s eyes flit desperately between his and Ryan’s. Up close, Michael can take a better look at his battered face – split lip, black eye, cuts down his cheekbone and across his jawbone – and he winces, then cringes when the wince makes his shoulder throb harder.

He’s in pretty bad shape too. The bullet might’ve gone through, but the wound needs to be stitched up and he definitely needs to not be standing here ready to rip Marco’s throat out.

Marco shoves Gavin ahead of him and they and Stefano move out of the container into the shade of the surrounding containers, side-stepping the dead bodies of the guys guarding the container. Michael and Ryan follow them closely, guns raised, Michael distantly aware of Jeremy hurrying to the corner of the container – Dan.

“Back off,” Marco warns, wrapping an arm around Gavin’s chest to pull him closer and pressing the gun under his chin, forcing his head up. “Lucia!”

Nobody answers.

Ryan glances at Michael and Michael shakes his head slightly. Yeah, that bitch is dead.

“Lucia!” Marco shouts again, louder, and Stefano echoes him, slowly turning his head to look over his shoulder while still keeping his shotgun trained on the five – four – of them.

“Dark hair, dark eyes, about this tall?” Ryan asks, holding his palm flat at about shoulder height. “Yeah, she’s dead.”

Marco falls completely silent. His body goes still.

“Knife through the throat,” Jack adds. “You didn’t miss her before now? She was the first one we killed. She didn’t suffer long, if that’s a comfort. Her corpse is pretty close to the corpse of the other dude, we think Gavin killed him, maybe?”

Marco’s hands are shaking, and lowering. The gun is now pointed slightly away from Gavin, down towards the ground. Michael doesn’t take his eyes off of it.

“It’s the one good thing Gavin’s done today,” Geoff adds.

“Hey!” says Gavin and more blood dribbles out and runs down his chin. He grimaces  and turns his head to the side, trying to spit it out.

“My sister,” Marco says in a whisper. “You killed my sister.”

“You took one of ours,” says Jack and Marco’s eyes snap to hers. “Yet we’re not even close to being even, fucker.”

“I will kill him!” Marco says and his voice has lost all composure, coming out shrill and high. His hands are shaking badly and the gun is back at Gavin’s throat now. Shit. Telling him the chick was dead just made things worse. Michael feels sweat run down his spine. Or maybe it’s blood. Or both. At this point, he’s just not sure.

“Fucking do it, then!” Geoff shouts, spreading his arms. “You fucking pussy! Your guys are dead, your sister’s dead, what have you got to lose? Is there anything left to live for, asshole?”

“Geoff!” says Michael, swaying on his feet.

“There’s fucking five us here,” Geoff continues, ignoring Michael, ignoring all of them, “you think you’re gonna walk out of here, you piece of shit? Huh? What’s your brilliant plan? Drag your goddamn hostage all the way through these goddamn containers, to wherever the fuck you’ve got a car stashed and then just drive out? Got news for you, buddy; that’s never gonna happen. So you might as well get it over with. You shoot him, we’ll shoot you and we can all go the fuck home!”

“What the fuck,” says Jack.

“What, Jack?” Geoff snaps. “Should I give a fuck about the guy who ruined the biggest heist we were ever gonna pull?”

“Geoff,” Gavin tries, his voice hoarse – and desperate.

“And you!” says Geoff and his gun moves from Marco to Gavin. Gavin’s eyes go impossibly wide. “You fucking asshole, you fucked me over good, you know that?”

“I didn’t mean to,” says Gavin, his voice achingly wobbly. “Geoff, please–”

“Of course you didn’t mean to,but that’s what you did, dude!” There’s an almost unnoticeable shakiness to Geoff’s voice and Gavin catches it, his eyes slipping closed. “We almost had her and then you ran away!”

“Geoff,” says Gavin and Michael is going to punch Geoff in the face for making him sound like that, so lost, so… alone. “Please, Geoff, I had to, I just… I-I had to. Dan–”

“Let’s not do this now,” says Jack, knuckles white from how hard she’s gripping her gun.

“I agree,” says Ryan, “before I do something I might regret.” His face has gone tight and blank, his eyes expressionless. Michael hasn’t seen him like this in a long, long time.

Geoff slants him a look, then his gaze shifts to where Jeremy is stumbling out of the container, Dan’s dead weight in his arms. It looks almost silly, fucking tiny Jeremy carrying Dan, but he’s not even stumbling. He does freeze when he realizes everyone’s looking at him.

Stefano’s shotgun moves toward Jeremy and Dan. Oh, fuck no.

“Uh,” says Jeremy. “What’s up, guys?”

The sheer casualness of those words snap Marco out of the daze his sister’s death put him in and he tightens his grip on Gavin and jams his gun harder into Gavin’s neck, stepping back and pulling him with him. “Stefano!” And it’s followed by a string of rapid Italian none of them understand, but the meaning is clear – Marco’s dragging Gavin off to somewhere, and Stefano is covering their retreat, his cold eyes flitting calculatedly between all of them, his shotgun unwavering. “Stay back!” Marco warns. “I’ll shoot him. It won’t be a deadly shot, but I assure you he will be hurting. He doesn’t _really_ need his cock, does he?”

Michael’s shoulder is burning and the world is loosely spinning around him, but he still feels something pretty close to a hysterical giggle bubble up inside him because, yeah, he’d definitely prefer Gavin keep his cock intact.

“You are dead,” Ryan informs Marco, his tone flat and low.

Marco tilts his head to one side, an almost pitying expression on his face. “You sound like you’ve escaped from a bad movie. Do be quiet, or improve your repertoire.”

Okay, well, now that guy is going to die even more slowly, and definitely more painfully.

“Shit, fuck, Christ!” says Jeremy from somewhere behind them and Michael turns his head just in time to catch him stumble to his knees, Dan still in his arms. His arms are shaking with the strain as he puts Dan back down on the ground as gently as he can. “Ow, fuck! Guy is heavier than he looks, dammit.”

Shit.

Marco and Stefano are moving again, heading toward God knows where and Michael steps forward, intent on going after them, Ryan right next to him, but Jack’s turning back, kneeling next to Jeremy at Dan’s still form.

“He’s been shot in the chest. He’s not dead yet and he could survive this, but he needs help _now_ ,” she snaps, glancing up at Geoff before moving her eyes over to Michael and Ryan. “We gotta get him to a hospital.”

“A hospital?” Jeremy repeats, the word coming out a little squeaky.

“Safehouse’s got an infirmary,” Ryan says, clipped. “Take him there. No hospital. Bullet wounds are a lot harder to explain in Europe. I’m going after that fucker.”

“So am I,” says Michael.

“You’re shot,” Jack points out.

“Don’t give a fuck,” says Michael, already moving, not willing to let Gavin out of his sight. Marco and Stefano are dragging him further away now, Marco still holding a gun to his head. “I’m not leaving him.”

“Michael, think about this!” Jack says, voice rising.

“I am!” he snarls. “I’m going with Ryan and we’re going to get that fuckface and we’re gonna kill him and get Gavin back. Do whatever the fuck you want. It was gonna be a two-person rescue anyway. Jeremy, you got Dan?”

“I mean,” says Jeremy, looking down to where Dan’s chest rises and falls unsteadily. “I’ll get him back to the house, but I don’t know anything about first aid or bullet wounds.”

“Geoff,” says Jack, standing up again. “You’re with Jeremy. Get him back to the house. I’ll go with Michael and Ryan. Jeremy, give me that thing you used to track Gavin.”

“You mean my phone?” Jeremy fumbles in his pocket and tosses it over to her. “Code’s 1765.”

“Thank you,” says Jack. “Just in case.”

“What?” says Geoff and Michael, already seeing that argument coming, carefully nudges Ryan and the two of them start walking after Marco and Stefano. Stefano, who’s still got a shotgun aimed at them, but who’s also too far away to really be accurate with it. Fuck.

“I’m not going back to the house!” Geoff says. “Why am I going back to the house?”

“Because you’re clearly not reasonable right now and those two need someone with a clear head,” says Jack coldly. “That’s me. Jeremy needs your help with Dan, Mr Army Medic. Help him.” And she marches past Geoff without breaking stride, her own shotgun in her arms again.

Geoff sputters behind them, but Michael puts it out of his mind, grimaces when Ryan’s arm goes around his waist again to silently support him, and casts a quick glance at Jack as she comes up on his other side.

“That didn’t make him happy,” he says to her.

“Nobody’s happy right now, Michael,” says Jack, “least of all me. Let’s just get Gavin back and hope Dan doesn’t die in the meantime.”

Chastised, Michael falls silent, and Ryan doesn’t say anything either as they follow the increasingly smaller figures disappearing in the distance.

“Let’s hang back–” Jack starts.

“What?” Ryan asks sharply and Jack fixes him with a glare.

“Let’s hang back and let them think they lost us,” she says, unlocking Jeremy’s phone and looking for the tracking app. “Gavin’s still wearing his watch and it’s still working so we can follow them anyway. Let’s give them a sense of security, all right? If they’re heading for a car, there’s no way we can get to ours quick enough to follow them anyway.”

“They might kill him,” Michael grits out.

“I don’t think so.” Jack shakes her head. “They would have done it already. No, they want him for something, you heard the guy. Dammit, we really should’ve brought those laptops they had in the container, fuck.”

“Too late now. Let’s just grab a car and go after Gavin,” says Ryan, leaning past Michael to look at the phone in Jack’s hand. “Where are they taking him? Fuck, I should’ve just shot him in the head and be done with it. Fuck.”

“Nothing to be done, Ryan,” says Michael. “He had a gun to Gav the whole time. One twitchy trigger finger and–” Bile rises up in his throat and he swallows it down, breathing deeply. His shoulder starts throbbing harder and he can feel blood seep through his fingers where he’s clutching his wound still. “Couldn’t take the risk.”

“Right,” says Jack. “We’re going back to our cars. Ryan, you drive.” She tosses him the phone underhand and Ryan nearly fumbles it. “I’ll try to bandage Michael up. You really should’ve gone with Jeremy and Geoff,” she adds, to him.

“Fuck that,” says Michael.

“Yeah,” says Jack. “I know.”

“I think his dot is speeding up… maybe,” Ryan says, squinting at the screen. “They may have gotten to a car.”

“Shit,” says Michael and he starts walking faster, ignoring the shooting pains in his shoulder. “Let’s move.”

Finding their way back to where they stashed their cars takes longer than Michael wants. It’s only because Jack and Ryan have a pretty good sense of direction that they find them at all, parked just where they left them. No guards in sight.

“So the others haven’t gotten back here yet,” says Ryan, getting behind the wheel of car closest to the exit.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Jack, gently maneuvering herself and Michael into the backseat, “Geoff’s probably doing what he can first before they move Dan again.” She glances at Ryan via the rearview mirror. “He can handle it.”

“I’m not doubting that,” says Ryan. “You two in?”

“Yeah.” Michael pants as he answers and that earns him a worried over the shoulder look from Ryan. He waves him off. “I’m fine. Drive. Don’t lose Gav.”

Jack’s gotten out a knife and is tearing and cutting off strips from the bottom of her shirt and Michael’s. Michael kinda lets it wash over him. Jack knows what she’s doing and she hates it when people who don’t know what they’re doing (like Michael) try to tell her what she needs to do. There’s a dull throbbing in his shoulder, made worse when Jack lifts his arm and starts wrapping the makeshift bandage around it, pulling it tight, but it’s nothing compared to the lead in his stomach when he thinks of Gavin, still in the hands of that guy.

“... was that?” Jack’s asking. “Michael.” She snaps her fingers in front of his face. “Michael.”

“Hm?” he says, blinking at her.

“You still good?” she asks. “Bleeding anywhere else?”

“No, no,” he says. “Just my shoulder. Sorry. I was just… thinking.”

“So was that guy?” she asks, tying off the bandage and wiping her blood covered hands on her shirt and shorts.

“No idea,” says Michael. “Gavin knew him, though, I’m pretty sure.”

“Yeah, I got that part,” she says. “Wanna tell me what happened after you left the base?”

“Not much to tell,” says Ryan from the front seat. He’s got the phone in one hand and is driving loosely with the other, eyes on the road. “We’d just gotten back there when we got a call from Dan. Seems like he knew that by then, the distress signal would’ve gone off and Gavin would know something was amiss.”

“And that’s when you decided to… you know, run off to Europe?”

“Gavin was going no matter what,” says Michael. “We weren’t gonna let him do that all by himself.”

“And at what point did you decide not to ask us for help?” Jack asks and Michael freezes.

Ryan visibly tenses up in the driver’s seat, then relaxes and steps on the gas, passing a handful of cars on the road while he keeps an eye on the phone and Gavin’s dot.

Michael wets his lips. “It’s just… it honestly… we didn’t think, Jack. We were in a hurry, so we just packed and left. It wasn’t… we weren’t trying to keep it from you guys.” Well, not entirely anyway.

“Besides, we weren’t sure Geoff would say yes,” adds Ryan, snarling when a scooter cuts in front of them. “Fuck off! Goddamn scooters!”

Jack sighs heavily and squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. “Okay,” she says after a long moment. “I guess I can almost understand that. But–”

“Can we not do this right now?” Michael asks. He hates interrupting her, but ha hates having this conversation right now even more. “There’ll be plenty of time to yell at each other later on, after we get Gavin back. Isn’t that what you said earlier? We have a job to do, so let’s do it.”

Her eyes narrow at him and her lips thin ever further. She opens her mouth, shakes her head and sighs again. “Fine,” she says, voice clipped. “We should focus on tracking Gavin.”

“We should,” Ryan agrees, looking a bit startled when Jack climbs into the passenger seat and snags the phone out of his hand. “All right, you do that and I’ll drive.”

“That’s the plan.”

Michael struggles to sit a little more upright. The makeshift bandage is actually helping a little, but the pain is still a steady, awful burn. He feels faintly nauseated. It’s definitely not great, but he’s not going to die.

He’s pushed back into his seat as Ryan accelerates down a long, mostly empty street, hands tight and controlled on the wheel.

“Take it easy,” Jack warns after a few minutes. “We’re getting close. Looks like they’re slowing down.”

Michael takes a look out the window. “Where are we?”

On the outskirts of Carienza, clearly, in a pretty nice, quiet residential area that kind of reminds Michael of the better suburbs of Los Santos. Large houses, separated from their neighbors and the streets, with bright green lawns and well-kept shrubbery.

“That’s the house,” Jack says, pointing at a two-story house with dark red bricks and a blindingly white roof. “Gotta be.”

There’s a dark red sedan parked haphazardly in the driveway, partially on the lawn, like its driver had been in a rush.

“I’ll go around to the side,” Ryan says, nodding toward the side of the house, where a tall brick wall would keep them from sight. “Luckily this is not a busy street.”

“All right,” says Jack, “let me just…” She taps her earpiece. “Geoff? Jeremy, come in.”

It takes a second, then Jeremy’s voice fills Michael’s ear. “I’m here,” he says, “we’re on our way back to the house. Gonna need the gate code, though, just thought of that.”

“Oh, crap,” says Michael. “It’s… uh, hang on. It’s… shit. Let me think.” It was on a piece of paper he doesn’t have on him anymore. “Fuck.” His head aches. “It’s either 20312 or 20213.”

“We’ll try both of those,” says Jeremy.

“Dan’s in a pretty bad shape,” Geoff cuts in. “He got beat up pretty badly and he’s been stabbed in non-lethal places a bunch of times. I’m not sure why he’s still unconscious, but I’ll let you know when I know more.” He pauses. “Find Gavin yet?”

“We’re at the place they took him,” Jack says and Geoff exhales loudly. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him back, Geoff.”

“I know you will,” says Geoff. “We’re out.”

“Well.” Michael says after a few seconds and scratches his nose. “He sounds a little less pissed.”

“Patching up Dan has distracted him a little and drove home the point Gavin didn’t run off for no good reason,” says Jack and her lips spread into an actual, tiny smile when she looks at him. “And I’m guessing Jeremy had a few things to say as well. Now,” she says, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Let’s go get Gavin back.”

“Wait,” Ryan says, touching his fingers to her arm. “I want Marco. Alive.”

Michael nods.

“We’re gonna talk,” Ryan continues. “For a while. So don’t shoot him on sight, all right?”

Jack works her jaw for a second and glances at Michael and nods. “Gotcha. I have a few things to say to him as well.”

Ryan smiles. “Glad we understand each other.”

“What weapons do we have?” Michael asks. “I… I can’t fire a gun.” He can’t even really raise his right arm, let alone aim, let alone deal with the kickback -- however minor -- from a gun. “Ryan, can I have a knife?”

“Of course. How good are you with your left hand?”

“Not great,” says Michael and as if to prove it, he misses catching the sheathed knife Ryan tosses him and it clatters down into the footwell. “Goddammit.” He kind of wishes he’d taken Ryan up on his offer to train him with knives more often. Ryan’s as good with his left hand as his right when it comes to stabbing and throwing, skills that would’ve come in pretty handy right about now. Maybe it’s time to expand a little from his dynamite and C4 routine, damn. He knows Gavin always enjoys the training sessions with Ryan, if only because they always end up having sex. That was a nice benefit too.

“Just stay behind us,” says Jack. “I’ve got a shotgun and an AP pistol.”

“Some throwing knives and Michael’s gun,” says Ryan, “and a bunch of ammo, too, thankfully.”

“Okay, so we’re… we’re not as well prepared as we could be, but we’ve been in worse situations,” says Jack. “They don’t know that we’re here, so we’ve got that going for us, but we don’t know if there’s more people in the house.”

“Oh,” says Michael dumbly. “They might’ve come here for help. We did just kill pretty much all of their guys aside from that Stefano dude.”

“Shoot to kill,” Ryan says. “Except for Marco.”

They get out of the car and Jack and Ryan block Michael from the handful of passing cars on the road. It’s hotter still, even though it’s not even halfway through the morning, and Michael sweats even more now that they’re out of the air conditioned car. Or it’s the fever he’s undoubtedly running, either which.

“Wait here,” says Ryan and he jogs over to the corner and disappears, returning less than a minute later. “All right, place’s got a backdoor. Can get in through a gate, so no need to climb walls. Didn’t see anyone through the windows, but there was some movement in one of the upstairs rooms, I think. Michael and I will head around back; Jack, you’ve got the front?”

“Yeah,” she says and taps her earpiece again. “Geoff, Jeremy? We’re going in.”

“Good luck,” says Jeremy, “we’re just back at the house. Dan’s waking up.”

“Oh, thank God,” says Michael, exchanging relieved looks with Ryan and Jack. “That’s good news.”

“Yeah. He might not like it that much, though,” says Jeremy. “Uh, Geoff and I will be taking the earpieces out for a while when we’re in the infirmary so we don’t get distracted by you guys. Take care, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Well, then we wouldn’t be us, would we?” Michael says and he can practically see Jeremy’s smile through the earpiece. “Put Dan back together, Lil’ J, all right?”

“We’ll do our best,” Geoff says. “Going offline now.”

Then it’s just the three of them on the comms and they all look at each other. Michael moves to stand next to Ryan and Jack watches him.

“All right, let’s do it,” says Ryan and he turns and walks off, Michael hot on his heels. “Stick with me. Don’t do anything stupid again.”

“What do you mean, ‘again’?”

But Ryan ignores him as they round the corner and approach the gate carefully. Ryan was right; there’s seemingly no one on the first floor, but upstairs Michael can see figures moving behind the thin white curtains and he ducks down a little, feeling like he could be seen. Ryan does the same and they sort of duck waddle over to the gate.

Ryan reaches up to his earpiece. “We going in silent?”

“I have a shotgun,” says Jack.

“Fair enough. Hard and loud it is. Hopefully the neighbors aren’t home.” The lock on the gate is nothing and Ryan just breaks it open with a _snap_ and he and Michael bend down low and hurry toward the backdoor, which is unlocked. It leads into a spacious, modern kitchen that’s been designed to look very old-fashioned. There’s nobody there and no sign the kitchen’s been recently used.

The next door leads into the dining area and then there’s the living room. It’s all clear, but there are definite footsteps overhead, upstairs, as well as low, rumbling voices. Michael and Ryan move into the cool, elegant hallway, where Jack’s just finished working the lock and the door swings open and she steps inside, shotgun at the ready.

“Ground floor’s clear,” Ryan murmurs. “Two, maybe three upstairs.”

“We haven’t been noticed,” Michael whispers.

“Good. Let’s keep it that way. I’ll go up first.” Jack squeezes past them and eases up the carpeted stairs, footsteps light and airy.

Michael’s heart beats an unsteady rhythm in his chest as he follows behind Jack and Ryan, knife clutched in his slippery left hand, curls sticking to his cheeks and forehead. Jack’s almost at the top when there’s a loud, angry scream. The voice is unmistakably Gavin’s and Michael lets out a helpless choking sound.

“–not happening, you bloody bastard!” Gavin’s voice, loud and clear, followed by low thuds and groans of pain.

Michael sucks in a huge breath and wills himself not to fight past Ryan and Jack on the stairs and storm into whichever room Gav’s in and start punching with his useless fucking arm. He’s confident he could at least bruise someone.

Ryan glances down at him, puts a finger to his lips. His body is tense and his eyes are cold and weary and he looks kind of terrifying, to be honest. dd

Jack puts up four fingers and mouths ‘ _four_ ’ at them. Four bedrooms, then, and it sounds like they’re maybe in one on the right.

And then there’s a guy coming out of a room on the left. He’s armed, but the gun’s in his pocket because he doesn’t seem to be expecting anything and his eyes go wide and panicky and then Michael winces when Jack’s shotgun blast opens a big hole in the middle of the guy’s chest and he’s flung back, crashes against the far wall, the most stupefied expression Michael’s ever seen on a dead guy.

“Up, up!” Ryan yells and he’s almost shoving past Jack in his hurry to get to one of the bedrooms. Michael sticks with Jack, grinning ferally when he watches her kick a door down and aim the shotgun at an empty room. “In here!” Ryan calls, followed by the sound of bullets – a rapid _pop pop pop_. Fuck, but they’re loud. Hopefully this place has got thick walls. “You mother _fucker_!”

Michael whirls around and sprints toward where Ryan’s gone and he stumbles into the room and nearly collides with Ryan’s back and _Gavin is here, he’s here, he’s…_ fuck. He’s caught another beating or two and his left eye is swollen shut and there’s a long gash down his right cheek that’s bleeding freely. But there’s something wild in the one eye that meets Michael’s and he grins widely, one tooth missing, his other teeth stained red, so he’s okay, _he’s okay_.

On the floor are two guys Ryan must have just killed and pressed against the far wall, an almost pitifully small pistol clutched in shaking hands, is Marco. Gavin’s off to the side on the floor, one hand cuffed to a ring in the floor and a laptop between his legs. Michael steps between him and Marco at once, raising himself up.

“Michael,” Gavin chokes out, voice ragged. “Michael, your shoulder… you…”

“Shut up,” Michael says and he raises his left hand with the knife and makes as good a show as he can aiming it at Marco. “I’m fine. You?”

“Been better,” says Gavin and his breath comes out wetly. “You got here in time, though.”

“You, however, are not going to be fine,” Ryan says, sizing up Marco. “Drop the gun.”

Jack doesn’t say anything, just racks her shotgun.

“You’re coming with us,” Michael tells him.

The gun in Marco’s hand is shaking badly and he looks wildly between the three of them. “But… how did you…? Stefano…”

“He’s that corpse,” Ryan says, kicking it for good measure. “Kind of a shitty guard if you ask me. Now. Drop the gun or I’ll start shooting. I’m gonna start low and work my way up.”

Marco licks his lips. “I… I suppose I really have no choice.” And he raises the gun up, to his head and Michael wastes no time, just throws the knife before his brain even catches up to his instinct. It’s the luckiest fucking throw in the history of the world and Michael’s never, ever gonna manage to do it again, but it hits, and it pins Marco’s hand to the wall through his palm. Marco shrieks like he’s dying and drops the gun and reaches for the knife and then Ryan and Jack are on him, grabbing him, Ryan getting his knife back while Michael turns and drops to the floor in front of Gavin, exhausted, miserable, in pain.

Gavin’s free hand comes up to thread through his hair. “Michael,” he says, “Michael, boi, look at me. Come on, please look at me.”

“You stupid fuck,” Michael says, looking at his dumb, battered face and leaning in to press his lips against Gavin’s. “I’m going to tear you apart when I can feel my arm again.”

“Okay,” says Gavin, “I deserve that. Ryan…”

And there’s Ryan, one gentle hand between Michael’s shoulder blades, careful to avoid his fucked up shoulder, and his other hand grasping Gavin’s chin and tilting his face side to side, inspecting the damage. “Looks like they broke everything but your nose. How’s that for irony?”

Michael starts laughing. It’s mostly hysteria bubbling up inside of him, the adrenaline of the past couple of hours, days, pouring out in a nonsensical way and Gavin and Ryan are looking at him with concern and then there’s Jack, pulling him up and inspecting his bandage again. He keeps laughing, giggling to himself, even as he looks at the now trussed up and gagged form of Marco on the floor, amidst the bodies of his friends.

“Breathe, Michael,” Jack instructs and he takes a couple of deep breaths and feels himself calm down a little. He turns again and sees Ryan free Gavin from the handcuff, sees him whisper something that makes Gavin first tense up, then go lax, eyes slipping shut. Ryan hugs him, presses a kiss against his bloodied cheek, and then he pulls Gavin up.

“Gavin,” Jack says and she steps closer and gives him a quick one-armed hug. “Glad you’re okay.”

“Lovely to see you too, Jack,” he says, swallowing nervously. “So you’re not… minged off?”

“Oh, I am very minged off, but there’s time for that later.”

“Fair play,” Gavin says. “We need to fix Michael’s shoulder ASAP, please.”

“And your face,” Ryan says. “And I think we could all do with some water and painkillers, too. I know I could.”

“Yeah,” says Jack, “let’s grab this asshole and not linger.”

Now that’s there’s real need for him to be hyper aware of everything anymore, Michael lets himself be towed out by Gavin, only half aware of Ryan and Jack dealing with Marco and bringing the car around. They stuff Marco in the trunk – he doesn’t really fit, nobody really cares – and Michael ends up half-sitting, half-lying in the backseat, his legs across Gavin’s lap.

“Can I sleep?” he mutters and he’s off before he can hear the answer.

*

When he wakes, he’s in a comfortable bed in a dark room. He pushes himself up on his elbows, not remembering, then then collapses back down with a small cry. “Goddammit!” He grabs at his right shoulder, feels it properly bandaged now, and the pain slowly ebbs away. He must be on some pretty good painkillers then.

He looks around, squints at a blurry thing on the nightstand that turns out to be his glasses and then reaches for the glass of water that’s also sitting there and downs it in a few big gulps. That feels goddamn _amazing_. Better than tequila right now.

Just as he’s wondering where the others are, the door opens quietly and Gavin sticks his head in, smiling widely when he sees Michael is awake. “Finally,” he says and flicks on a light and slowly limps closer to sit on Michael’s bed.

“How long–” His voice is raspy and he has to clear his throat a couple of times. “How much did I sleep?”

“Probably around fourteen hours or so,” says Gavin, toying with the blanket an inch away from Michael’s hand. “I only woke up about two hours ago myself.”

“They cleaned you up nicely,” Michael says, reaching up and tracing a finger down the stitches on Gavin’s cheek.

Gavin closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “Best they could. I lost a tooth–” He demonstrates the fact by jamming his tongue through the hole and makes a face. Ah, that explains why he sounds weird and lisp-y at times. “–but I can’t get that fixed til we’re back home. I’m thinking gold, Michael.”

“That would look ridiculous and stupid,” Michael tells him and Gavin smiles at him. “What else?”

“Well, the eye,” says Gavin, pointing at his black-and-blue eye. “That’ll be a couple of days before the swelling goes down. My knee got pretty banged up, too. No treadmill for me for a while. Other than that, just a whole lot of cuts and bruises that should heal up fine, Jack says. Your gunshot wound was a clean through-and-through and should also heal up fine with no permanent damage. You may need some PT when we get back home, though.”

Michael groans and wriggles his head into the pillow. “Fuck.”

The door opens again and this time it’s Ryan.

“He’s up,” Gavin says and Ryan nods and closes the door behind him before sitting down on Michael’s other side.

“Well,” Ryan says, looking at each of them in turn, “I’d say we had quite a day.”

“Wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting if Gavin hadn’t run off in the middle of the fucking night. Wouldn’t have been shot, at the very least.”

“Well,” Gavin says, now looking down at the blanket as if it’s most fucking fascinating thing in the world, “I’m really sorry, Michael. And Ryan too. I just…” He swallows and still doesn’t look at either of them. “I just went to see Dan and he… he’s pretty messed up. I couldn’t sleep yesterday, just kept tossing an’... an’ turning, thinking about what they might be doing to Dan and then thinking about the same thing happening to either of you…” His voice trails off. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I panicked. You’ll have noticed I sometimes do rash things when I’m panicking.”

“Yeah, no shit,” says Michael. “We came all the way to fucking Italy with you, to be with you, to help you find Dan, and the second you find him, you just go off on your own.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Gavin says, quietly, desperately.

“That doesn’t excuse it,” says Ryan.

“I know it doesn’t! But I… I wanted to protect you, best as I could, anyway.”

“And now we’re having this fight again,” says Michael and glares when Gavin gives him an utterly uncomprehending look. “The hotel room? Us on the balcony, talking about you giving yourself to Dan’s kidnappers?”

“Besides, we can take care of ourselves,” Ryan says. He doesn’t sound angry, just tired, and the lines around his eyes have deepened. Has he slept at all? He doesn’t look it.

“So can Dan,” Gavin says and now there’s real fire in his voice. “And look what happened to him! He’s practically my brother, but you–you are my… my everything and the thought of losing either of you was...” He grips the blanket tightly and says, “I couldn’t stand it. I’d traced Dan’s call earlier in the day and I figured I could just go and grab him. Didn’t really think about him maybe not being mobile.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Panicking. I do stupid shite.”

“Gavin,” Ryan says and he reaches over Michael’s body to grab Gavin’s hand and give it a squeeze. “Don’t ever do that again, okay? Trust me. Trust _us_.”

Michael reaches out and lays his hand on top of theirs, even though he still kind of wants to use it to strangle Gavin with first. “We have your back, Gav. Always.”

“God, I’m so stupid,” Gavin says, hanging his head.

“No, no,” Ryan says, at the same time Michael goes, “well, kinda. Oh, come on,” Michael adds, when he sees their faces, “it was a little dumb, admit that.”

“I mean…” Ryan looks vaguely shifty and there’s the first hint of a real smile on Gavin’s face again.

“A lot dumb,” Michael goes on, pressing down on their hands underneath his. “Very Gavin, in fact.”

“Michael…” says Gavin, but he’s still smiling.

“Come here,” Michael says, flapping his left hand until Gavin leans in and Michael can grab him by his neck and pull him in for a kiss. “You too,” he tells Ryan, and God, he feels so much better having kissed them, having felt them alive and well. Better than any drug. “So… where’s Geoff? And the others?”

“Jack and Jeremy are in the house. Jack’s mostly keeping an eye on Dan, Jeremy is… I’m not sure what he’s doing, actually,” says Ryan.

“Probably looking at the perimeter,” says Michael.

“Sounds like Lil’ J,” Gavin agrees.

“Geoff left a couple of hours ago. Said he was going for a drive to clear his head. Don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Did you talk to him?” Michael asks.

“Nope.” Ryan tucks a loose strand of dark hair behind his ear. “We were dealing with you and Dan and Gavin and there was no real time for it. It was all very hectic, especially when it came to Dan.”

“So what did they… or Marco, at least, do to him?”

Gavin’s face goes dark and his shoulders creep up toward his ears. “They kicked the living daylights out of him, is what they did to him. He’s in worse shape than I am. He’s got broken ribs and a broken wrist, sprained ankle, multiple stab wounds… Marco…” Gavin takes a deep breath. “Marco cut him up pretty badly too, basically everywhere. He’s asleep now, but he should be fine. Right, Ryan?”

“Right,” says Ryan, “that’s what Jack told me. He’s in pretty bad shape, but it also looks worse than it really is. They cut up his face pretty good, which accounts for a lot of the blood, and his broken wrist broke the skin so that wasn’t a pretty sight either. So,” he then says, looking at Gavin, “wanna tell us who this guy is? Be nice to know before I go in and kill him.”

“Wait, wait,” Michael says, grabbing at Ryan’s arm, “I wanna go in and kill him too. You’ll wait for me, right?”

“Yes, Michael,” Ryan says patiently and he gives him a grin, “I will wait for you. It’ll be a group effort, anyway.”

“Can it wait til we’re with the others? I’d rather not tell the whole story twice.” Gavin runs a hand through his hair. “Besides, I wanna go look in on Dan again.”

“Fine,” says Michael. “Help me get out of this damn bed.”

*

Dan is still sleeping, so after checking on him and watching Gavin stare at all the machines that are keeping track of how he’s doing – Gavin says it feels oddly comforting – they just sort of make their way over to the main living room (the mansion has several smaller, similar areas that Michael is honestly not sure what they’re even for. Who needs more than one living room?) and settle down on the couch. Ryan finds them some food and they’re halfway through sandwiches and some weird kind of Italian sausage rolls when Jeremy pops back in, gun in his hand, gun strapped to his back.

“Place is safe,” he announces. “Oooh!” And he dives for the sandwiches.

“Coulda told you that, Jeremy,” Gavin says.

“Yeah, well, I like to make sure for myself,” says Jeremy, with his mouth full of ham and cheese. “This is really good.”

“Geoff back yet?” Ryan asks.

Jeremy shakes his head, chews some more and chugs down some water. “Not yet. Jack’s getting a little worried since he also didn’t take a phone or an earpiece.”

“Great,” says Michael. “First we gotta rescue Gavin’s dumb ass, now our next mission is to find Geoff.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” says Jack, appearing in the doorway. “We having lunch here?”

“Why not?” says Ryan, gesturing at the table laden with food. He’s practically lounging in a chair, long legs stretched out in front of him. “Dig in.”

They make kind of awkward small talk through lunch. Michael notices halfway through that it’s actually almost 4pm and calling it ‘lunch’ doesn’t seem accurate. Nobody seems to want to talk about everything that went down just yet. Jeremy talks about checking out the gardens and all the rooms and the pool and the gym – for security purposes, of course.

Jack can’t stop talking about the armory and the infirmary and then she says, rubbing the bridge of her nose, “so, Gavin, there’s also this room in the back of the house. It’s got tiled walls and a slightly slanted floor and there’s a drain in the floor…”

“Oh,” Gavin says. “An interrogation room.”

“Yeah, I assume all the hooks and knifes and restraints hanging from the walls are really good for interrogation,” Jack says dryly. “Whose place _is_ this?”

“I really don’t know,” Gavin says. “And it sounds like it’s probably for the best that we don’t know the owner, innit?”

“I guess,” she says, giving him a hard look.

“Knives do come in handy when people aren’t feeling talkative,” Ryan says thoughtfully. “Did you put Marco in that room?”

“Not yet,” she says. “But he’s secure.”

Just then, there’s the slamming of the front door and heavy footsteps. Geoff’s back. They’re all silent while he tries to figure out where everybody is. Gavin exchanges nervous looks with Michael and Ryan, and Ryan, closer to him, reaches out and grabs his knee, giving it a squeeze. He also mouths something at him Michael doesn’t catch, but Gavin relaxes and grins back.

Geoff steps into the room. His hair is tousled and his moustache is askew. There’s bags under his each eyes. He puts his hands on his hips and surveys the room. “So we’re having lunch, are we?”

“Gavin and Michael woke up. We were hungry,” Jeremy says. “Sandwich?”

“No,” Geoff says and he turns his attention to Gavin, who manages to both cringe in on himself and sit up a little straighter. “Hey, Gavin.”

“Yes, Geoff?” Gavin’s voice sounds steadier than Michael expected, even if Geoff’s name comes out a bit odd because of the missing tooth.

Geoff crosses the room to where Gavin is sitting and everyone fucking tenses up, Michael sees, and he and Ryan are half out of their chair before he even realizes what he’s doing. But Geoff just leans down and grabs Gavin in tight, hard hug.

Gavin, whose eyes had grown wide at Geoff’s approach, lets out a deep breath and hugs him back. Nobody says anything for a minute. Jack’s eyebrows have climbed up to meet her hairline; Jeremy is frozen with a sandwich halfway to his mouth.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Geoff mumbles and then pulls back, “you asshole. I’m still mad at you.”

“Okay,” says Gavin. “Fair play.”

“Why?” Ryan asks, voice flat. “Because we screwed the casino heist?”

Michael appreciates his use of the word ‘ _we_ ’. Ryan’s not planning on letting Geoff pile all the blame on Gavin. Neither is Michael.

“Because you ran off to Italy without saying anything!” Geoff stands up straight and spreads his arms. “And yeah, because you screwed up the heist! That’s weeks worth of prep down the shitter.”

“I needed to get to Dan,” Gavin says quietly.

“I know that!” Geoff almost yells the words. “I… I know that! But goddammit, we almost had her. Almost fucking had her. After… God knows how many years.” He flings himself onto the couch, next to Jack, and crosses his arms over his chest. He leans his head back and stares at the ceiling. “I’ve never been so close to actually getting back at her. It’s just… I wanted…” He’s silent for a couple of long seconds. “I’m sorry.” He looks at Gavin and then away.

Ryan’s frowning.

“I got caught up,” Geoff says. “Too caught up. Tanya Delacroix does that to–I’m sorry, I really am. Dan’s your friend and any friend of yours is a friend of ours.”

Relief floods Michael’s system. Christ. This is going a lot better than he had been expecting. He figured there’d be more yelling and way more gun waving. Even Ryan relaxes a little, Michael can see it from the corner of his eye. “That’s what we figured,” he says, “we couldn’t let Gavin go off by himself.”

“We would have gone with you, had you given us the _damn chance_ ,” Jack says slowly, clenching and unclenching her fists. “But you were almost out of the country by time we realized you probably weren’t returning to the base.”

“Everything happened really fast.” Gavin meets her eyes. “Super fast. I wasn’t planning on taking them, I was just going alone. Not the first time I’d have to get Dan out of some sort of situation, but they… they wanted to come.” He glances over to Michael and Ryan and a flush tinges his cheeks and his eyes are a little bright. “I guess we were on a plane before I even fully realized what was happening.”

“To be honest,” Michael says, “Geoff was so pissed we were kind of rushing to get out before he’d send someone else to Gavin’s place.”

Geoff groans and claps his hands over his face. “I was gonna send Treyco and Fredo before Jack and Jeremy, uh, sat me down.”

“I almost sat _on_ you,” Jeremy mutters quietly and Michael snorts at that.

“Well, if we’re gonna be all honest and shit,” Ryan starts, sitting up and immediately drawing everyone’s attention, “I spent a lot of time actually a little pissed off at you, Geoff, for not dropping everything to help Gavin. I don’t know you as well as he does, or as any of you do, but you didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d just abandon his friends when they needed him.”

Geoff stares at him, a muscle in his jaw tensing. “I’m not.”

“It looked like it, for a while there.”

The two of them stare at each other. Michael feels a chill run down his spine. He’s not sure he wants to be around if the two of them ever become true enemies.

“But I know now that you’re not,” Ryan says, after a long beat. “I understand. I understand that kind of… of obsession.” He cuts a quick glance at Gavin. “I’ve been there. It sort of consumes everything. It makes you–”

“–fucking stupid?” Geoff finishes. “Yeah. I’m lucky. I had good friends who snapped me out of it.”

“Well, you were still pretty pissed off when you got to the house,” says Michael. “I thought you were going to kill us.”

Geoff chews his bottom lip. “Seeing you kinda brought all the anger back,” he admits. “But I’m glad I came. I’m glad you’re all okay, _all_ of you.”

Michael absently rubs his injured shoulder. “Glad you came,” he says simply, “I’m not sure how we could’ve pulled off what we did without you, especially after Gavin decided it really was a solo mission after all.”

“Michael,” Gavin protests unhappily.

“So who is this guy anyway?” Jack asks. “Old friend of yours?”

Gavin shifts in his chair and curls up his legs underneath him, reaching for a bottle of water on the table and uncapping it. “Not really,” he says. “He is someone I know from a long time ago. In the town where Dan and I grew up, there was a small but hard working little group of well, people like us. All of us had Italian roots and I guess that kind of brought us together, like a little community in the middle of shitting nowhere, England. Dan and I got involved when we were about seventeen years, I think, and the people we got involved with were Marco and Lucia’s parents.”

“Their parents?” Michael repeats. “Not them?”

“No, not them. They were twins and their parents always kind of kept them shielded from the business we were in. I’m not sure if that was because they weren’t any good at it or because they wanted to protect them. I guess they were also kind of jealous, maybe?”

“Of you and Dan?” Geoff sounds so incredulous Michael has to stifle a laugh.

“Yeah, don’t laugh.” Gavin sounds insulted. “We didn’t have anybody but each other and at that time, we were already pretty heavily involved in some, you know, minor smuggling and hacking and all that fun stuff. Stuff the Agazzis didn’t really let their kids do. Marco and Lucia looked up to us, even though they were a few years older, and they tried real hard to be our friends, but we weren’t interested in that and we also didn’t quite trust them enough to get closer to them.” Gavin closes his eyes as he recounts the story. “They resented that, I think, but they never said anything. Anyway, to make a long story quite a bit shorter, the Agazzis screwed us over. We’d been working together for about a year and they just thoroughly mangled us, stealing all of the cash we had on hand and abandoning us to some not very nice people.”

“Jesus,” Jeremy says. “And you were seventeen?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?” Jack asks.

Gavin shrugs and stares at his hands folded in his lap. “Dan got us out. It wasn’t pretty, but we did what we always did. We survived. We were left with the clothes on our back, guns in our hands, and a bit of spending cash I’d stashed away in foreign accounts.”

“Assholes,” Jeremy says.

“So… wait, why is Marco angry at you when his parents screwed _you_ over?” Michael asks. “It should be the other way around.”

“It’s not the end of the story, Michael,” says Gavin reproachfully. “We went to ground, Dan and I. Made it look like we bailed, just completely disappeared, maybe even died. Dan wanted to kill them, but I convinced him we needed to _end_ them. Killing the Agazzis would just mean the twins or other relatives would take over the business.”

“So you didn’t kill them.” Geoff makes it a statement. “I would have.”

Michael nods along with Jeremy and Jack.

Gavin laughs a little. “You should talk to Dan when he’s awake again, because he felt the same way. No, what I did was I destroyed their reputation. It took nearly a year and Dan was pretty minged off at me for most of it, but I spent months spreading rumors, online and off, making it look like the Agazzis were making deals with the enemies of their friends, alerted the HMRC to some of their less well protected shady companies, edited videos to make them look real friendly with their enemies, spread disinformation, that sort of thing.”

“Jesus, Gav. I assume it worked?” Geoff’s sitting up now, hands clasped between his knees.

“Oh yeah,” says Gavin. “Their paranoia just kept growing and in the end, Maria Agazzi bit it first. A business partner of theirs didn’t believe her when she claimed to have no contact with someone I made it look she was really friendly with and he killed her. Sergio died after I let an associate of theirs know he had been talking to the local police. Not true, of course, but…” Gavin grins widely. “Sometimes the smallest rumor is enough if you build it on the strength of all the filth that’s come before it. Once they were both dead, I went in, stole what little money they had left and threw a party.”

“A party,” Jack repeats.

“Yes. And we invited all their friends-turned-enemies and we had a grand time. I suppose around that time Marco and Lucia figured out we were behind it all, but they had no power left, no money, no friends, not anything to use to come at us. As far as I know, they left England then and I didn’t see either of them again until… yesterday. God, was it only yesterday?” Gavin rubs his forehead. “Feels like it’s been months.”

“So he wanted… what? From you?” Jeremy’s almost falling out of his chair with the way he’s leaning forward to hear every detail of the story.

“Money,” says Gavin. “He wanted to be reimbursed for all the money I stole from his dead parents and he wasn’t stopping until he got it. Poor sod could’ve made a clean getaway if he’d just shot me in the car, but he… well, he was obsessed.”

“Christ,” says Michael, “am I glad for his dumb obsession with money.”

Gavin shoots him a grateful look. “Me too. That’s always been his issue. He wanted money. He was angry back then that he was given an allowance by his parents while Dan and I were making our own way and he always wanted more. Fought with his parents a lot. I guess that’s why they never really gave him a lot to do in the business, aside from occasionally being there for deals and running guns and drugs every once in a while. He was little more than a messenger boy.”

“Jeeeeesus,” Geoff says on an exhale. “What a dumbfuck.”

“What about the girl, Lucia?” Jeremy asks.

“Oh, she was not much smarter than her brother and not particularly interested in, you know, the business. She usually just did what she was told. Sometimes it felt like she wanted out of the whole thing, but she never did. The money was a draw for her too, she had expensive taste. Who killed her, by the way?”

Ryan raises a hand. “That was me. Knife through the throat.”

“Wish I’d seen it,” Gavin says wistfully.

“Well, you can see me do my act again when I talk to Marco and explain to him using very small words and very sharp knives that it’s a bad idea to injure the people I love,” says Ryan. “Which I’m itching to do, not gonna lie about it. Can we go ahead and take him up to that very nice, shiny ‘interrogation’ room upstairs?”

“I’m coming with,” says Gavin, getting up and extending a hand to Michael to help him to his feet as well. “And by the way, that knife throw pinning Marco’s hand to the wall? Bloody amazing, when did you learn to do that?”

“Yeah, seriously,” says Jack. “I think my jaw was on the floor.”

“I didn’t,” Michael says, his cheeks heating up. “I mean, I didn’t learn. Total fluke, dude, pure dumb luck.”

“Still, bloody brilliant, Michael,” says Gavin, a light in his eyes, and he leans in a little and says, in Michael’s ear, “and so hot.”

Michael’s body heats up as if on command and he grabs Gavin’s face with his left hand, mindful of his black eye, and kisses him. It’s a little weird with his missing front tooth, but he makes the best of it, and Gavin’s flushed face looks fantastic when he finally pulls away.

“Get a room,” Jeremy mutters, but there’s no heat behind the words and he’s smiling this kind of dorky smile.

God, he wants to, but he can still barely move his arm, so anything too energetic is out of the question for him for the time being. “I think my arm has other ideas,” he says, glancing down sadly at his shoulder. “Be a while before I can do anything…” He gestures vaguely. “Interesting.”

Ryan comes up behind him and bends down to his ear. “You don’t need arms to get a blowjob, you know.”

Michael bites back a groan and turns to him, ignoring Gavin’s stifled giggle. “Don’t start now,” he says. “Let’s do the other thing first.”

“Right,” says Ryan, his eyes steadily on Michael. “First things first.”

*

In the end, it doesn’t take all that long. Marco refuses to say much, just glares at Gavin, and he doesn’t start screaming until the knives and pliers come out. Oh, and the burning branding iron gets some shrieking as well.

Ryan does the job, with Michael standing beside him handing him tools and Gavin watching impassively. Jack, Jeremy and Geoff lean against a wall and offer tips and advice. It’s old times again and it feels so damn good.

They do get something out of him. Dan's kidnapping? Pure fucking luck on Marco's part. He'd just seen him, at a damn ice cream shop, and recognized him immediately. It'd been pretty easy to pluck a non-suspecting Dan out of a crowd watching a magician on the boulevard. That had been the hard part. The easiest part had been luring Gavin in. Marco laughs scornfully as he regales them with the story and he's rewarded with Jack kicking him in the face.

They’re not entirely sure what to do about the body, so for the time being they wrap it up and weigh it down. One of the city’s many canals would probably be a good place to dump the body, but they’re not doing it until they’re ready to leave the country.

Which isn’t going to be for another couple of days. Dan is awake and talking, but still in pretty bad shape, and Gavin is insistent they bring him back with them to the US so he can recover at his place. It’s gonna be tough to transport him via plane without anyone asking irritating questions, though.

Michael finds them talking out on the terrace, their heads bent closely together. Gavin’s got a laptop with him – actually two laptops – and Dan is talking animatedly. His chest is heavily bandaged, but overall he looks pretty good for a guy who got shot in the chest.

Dan spots him first, raising a hand and wincing as he does it. “Ow. Hey! Michael!”

Michael wanders over. “You remembered my name?”

“Of course!” Dan laughs. “For quite some time there, you were all Gavin could talk about. Michael this, Michael that, listen, B, Michael did the most amazing thing today… couldn’t shut up about you. It was big scary Ryan all over again.”

Gavin glares at him. “I’d kick you, B, but then you’d shatter into pieces.” He gives Michael a quick little look. “We were just talking about Dan maybe getting onto a similar type of cargo plane the other three came in on. But we’d need to find a way to make it a little more comfortable, because they just sat on the floor for like seventeen hours and it wasn’t that great.”

“Oh.” Michael cringes. “I had no idea it was that bad.”

“Well, it’s a cargo flight, mate,” Dan says. “Those cargo areas aren’t built to transport humans.”

“We flew here first class,” Michael informs him and Dan barks out a laugh.

“There’s a contrast, then. I have a passport, I could just fly in the normal way. We’d just need some sort of medical certificate to explain away my issues. Maybe I was in a bad crash?”

“Could work, could work.” Gavin’s nodding along while Dan talks, his fingers on his laptop keyboard. “I can’t get the others decent fake passports on short notice, though, so they’re gonna have to go back the way they came in. Let me see what I’d need for you, Dan...”

“I think Geoff’s already working on arranging that,” says Michael. “He sounded both real pissed off and real damn impressed when he learned about the stuff you had ready for all of us, Gav. He’s gonna want to see it.”

“Why was he angry? Oh, because we were comfortable and slept and were given food. Makes sense.” Gavin goes back to looking at his screen. “Hopefully this place has a printer, because I think I found what we need.”

“So…” Michael draws the word out. “Dan’s gonna be staying at your place?”

“Yeah,” Gavin says absently. “Why? He’s stayed at my place before.”

“Well, you know, you don’t actually really live alone anymore these days,” Michael points out. “That’s not gonna be a problem for Dan?”

“Hey,” says Dan. “Dan is right here and Dan doesn’t like being talked about as though he’s not. You don’t live alone anymore, Gav? Who are you living with?”

“Uh,” says Gavin, “I suppose Ryan and Michael live with me. I mean, we all live together. In my apartment.” He’s coloring slightly, but not in an embarrassed or ashamed way, Michael thinks, more in a pleased, proud way. “I… I never really thought about it, but yeah.”

Dan gapes for a second, then laughs, shaking his head. “Well done, B.”

“Shut up,” Gavin grouses and Michael laughs too.

“No, really,” says Dan, giggling, “Michael _and_ Big Scary Ryan?” He says it like it’s all capitalized and Michael wonders how the two of them met. “That’s bloody brilliant is what it is.”

“Glad it’s not an issue,” says Michael, raising his eyebrows at him.

“An issue?” Dan repeats. “No… I mean, no, of course not. It’s B. I’m glad he found someone. Or multiple someone _s_. You have to tell me how you do it, though; God knows I can’t put up with him for longer than a week.”

“Oy,” Gavin says, “and here I am trying to be nice to you.” He turns the laptop around to show a bunch of digital paperwork about medical issues on flights or whatever. Michael’s not gonna read all that. “This should get you onto a plane without questions asked. Which passport are you using?”

Gavin’s happy. Michael can see it in the way his battered and bruised face lights up when he looks at Dan’s battered and bruised one, and in the smile that never leaves his lips. Good. Happy Gavin is his favorite Gavin. He makes the bullet wound in his shoulder worth it. He’s gonna spend the rest of his life making Gavin look this happy. He reaches out and tugs on a stray strand of his hair and Gavin grins at him.

“You need something, boi?” Gavin asks.

“No,” Michael says, spotting Ryan coming out of the kitchen and heading toward them carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and a bunch of food. “I’m good. Got everything I need right here.”

*

The night’s pleasantly warm and the sky is clear and beautiful, dotted with stars and lit up with an almost full moon. Michael’s pretty sure there’s a term for a moon that’s almost full, but he can’t remember it. Lying here, with Gavin on one side and Ryan on the other, on top of surprisingly comfortable air beds, he doesn’t really care either.

Over his head, Gavin and Ryan are having some kind of really stupid argument about body switching and having sex while in other people’s bodies and Michael’s tuned them out a while ago. It’s really the only way he keeps his sanity, especially when they insist on having their dumb fucking fights when he’s in bed, trying to sleep. It usually ends with Michael trying to smother Gavin with a pillow while Ryan laughs at them. Thinking about that makes him feel warm and cozy inside.

It’s good.

His life is so fucking good right now.

“All right, all right, all right, you win, Gavin, just fucking shut the fuck up,” Ryan says.

Gavin lets out a small little ‘yay’ and presses closer to Michael. “I won, Michael.”

“I think he let you win.”

“Still counts.” Gavin will take his small victories wherever he can. “So, we’re up here on our rooftop because we got you something, Michael, boi.”

“Yeah?” says Michael. “What did you get me?”

Gavin checks his watch. “Few more minutes. It’s not yet midnight.”

“In the meantime, I can already give you this,” Ryan says and his strong fingers turn Michael’s face toward him and then they’re kissing, low and slow and warm.

Gavin leans up on one elbow and watches him, stroking a hand down Michael’s arm. His shiny new gold front tooth glitters whenever he smiles. It's exactly as irritating and gaudy as Michael had suspected it would be and it fits him perfectly. “My turn,” he says, when Ryan’s done and Michael’s left feeling lightheaded and like he’s flying. Gavin’s three-day beard is scratchy and he smells nice and he’s eager and bitey as usual, tugging on Michael’s bottom lip. It makes hot spike shoot through Michael and he groans, reaching up to cup Gavin’s face.

It’s too much. The two of them are too much.

Gavin laughs when he pulls away and touches the tip of Michael’s nose. “You’re all flustered. You’re so red.”

“You’re red,” Michael says and it’s a lie.

Gavin’s laugher is abruptly cut off when Ryan kisses him, right over Michael’s face, giving him an excellent view. He swallows, feels his dick stir in his jeans.

“Nice,” he says, when they pull apart. “Very nice.”

“It’s midnight,” Ryan says and Gavin pushes himself up further and starts fumbling for something on his other side. He comes up with his phone a second later and starts tapping. “Really, you didn’t get it ready in time?”

“Almost there,” Gavin says, and then the world explodes into sounds and colors. It’s almost all fireworks, gorgeous, beautiful fireworks, but Michael knows the sounds of C4 and dynamite, the sounds of big bombs and mini bombs going off somewhere in the distance, and his mouth curls up into a smile. “Happy birthday, boi.”

“Happy birthday,” Ryan echoes. “We got you explosions. And some other things, which are still in the apartment so as to not scandalize the neighbors.”

“But first we’ll go below and survey the carnage,” Gavin promises. “We put dynamite in some really fun places, you’re gonna love it.”

Fuck, but his life is amazing.

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think :)
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr.](http://midwintersong.tumblr.com/)


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